MANUFACTURING MODERNITY: THE 2008 BEIJING OLYMPIC OPENING CEREMONY
AND CHINAS REBRANDING
by
Amber Hsin-i Levis
Presented to the
Committee on Degrees in History and Literature
and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Arts
Harvard College
Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 3, 2025
Word Count: 16,218
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION:
White
Ash
.....................................................................................................
1
ONE:
Mathematical
Majesty’
.................................................................................
9
Beijing’s
Bid
..............................................................................................................................
9
Let
The
Games
Begin
..............................................................................................................
12
Martial
Arts
..............................................................................................................................
17
An
Empire
of
Production
.........................................................................................................
23
Made
in
China
..........................................................................................................................
27
‘We
don’t
have
control
over
our
people
like
that
...................................................................
30
TWO:
‘A
New
Era’
.................................................................................................
33
Zhang
Yimou’s
Second
Chance
...............................................................................................
33
Condemn
it
if
you
like
...........................................................................................................
34
Benefit
the
..........................................................................................................
37
Confronting
Confucius
.............................................................................................................
43
One
World,
One
Dream
...........................................................................................................
49
Being
Harmonized
...................................................................................................................
55
CONCLUSION:
What
Does
China’s
Future
Hold?
.................................................................
65
BIBLIOGRAPHY
........................................................................................................................
77
2
INTRODUCTION: White Ash
Everyone seems to have something to say about the 2008 Olympics. Most people I talk to
still remember it. This summer, after the 2024 Paris Games, disgruntled viewers flocked to the
comments section of the YouTube video for the 2008 Opening Ceremony.
I came back here to see what a REAL olympic opening ceremony looks like
The only country who respects the spirit of olympic games, thank you Chinese brothers
from Greece. Our countries have a long history, that's why we respect each other!
Leaving a comment to remind everyone that THIS IS WHAT THE REAL ceremony
should look like. No country ever beats Beijing 2008 yet!!
1
I do not personally recall the 2008 Games in much detail, but I remember my parents
huddled around the dim, curved screen of our living room CRT television, enthusiastically
rooting for their home countries. I remember my mothers delight and my fathers
disappointment when I picked a side and started chanting: China! China! China!
But the China we rooted for in 2008 was no longer the China that my mother had known.
Economic reforms under Chairman Deng Xiaoping had set the country on a rapid trajectory of
modernization.
China became noticeably more engaged
in global trade, attracting investors and
companies seeking to lower manufacturing costs. By 2008, it was known as the world’s
factory.
2
Just 32 years after his death, Mao Zedong’s China had receded and was replaced by a
new economic system that scholar Erin Huang refers to as neoliberal post-socialism.
3
As
anthropologist Jennifer Hubbert observes, the 2008 Games signaled a tectonic shift in the global
3
Erin Huang,
Urban Horror
:
Neoliberal Post-Socialism
and the Limits of Visibility
(Duke University Press,
2020), 2.
2
Kevin Honglin Zhang,
China as the World Factory
(Routledge,
2006), 1.
1
@kirole7381, @zarok1757, @jrenspace Comments on “Full Opening Ceremony from Beijing 2008,
posted by “Olympics,” YouTube video, 4:18:00, August 8, 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bufV3EgyPGU&t=764s
1
financial order and played a crucial role in shaping modern Chinese identity.
4
For many Chinese
citizens, the Olympics heralded the long-awaited arrival of national prosperity.
Hubberts
interviews with Chinese youth illustrate how the Opening Ceremony served as a platform for
Chinese audiences to compare western
5
economic development models to Chinas own.
6
Given
the high stakes,
the organizing committee tasked Zhang
Yimou, Chinas most renowned living
director, with directing the Opening Ceremony. Zhang
7
had only a matter of hours to redefine
how the world perceived China.
He succeeded remarkably. The ceremony prompted western nationals to seriously
consider the emergence of a China that was a stronger, richer, and more powerful competitor
than they had imagined. In his review of the ceremony, film critic Robert Ebert confronted his
earlier impressions of China as countless little people with chopsticks and pigtails. Yao Ming
wouldn’t have fit into my picture. China in those days had a pathetic economy… Today, from a
standing start, China has the world’s third-largest economy. We are first, but sinking. They’re
rising.
8
8
Roger Ebert,
Zhang Yimous gold medal
,”
Chicago
Sun-Times,
August 9, 2008.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/08/zhang_yimous_gold_medal.html
7
A note on Chinese names: in Chinese, the surname comes before the given name. All citations in the
bibliography will still follow the English convention with last name, first name. When someones name appears in
text, it will be written to follow the Chinese convention the last name will always precede the first name.
6
Hubbert, “Of Menace and Mimicry,1.
5
There are arguments for keeping the “w” in “westernlowercase, which I will do throughout this paper.
Here is the reasoning that a contributor to The Chicago Manual of Style online blog provides: “When making
reference to western (occidental) cultures, western media, western identity politics, I prefer to use a lowercase
w
to
de-emphasize the unity of the West (even though it is often convenient in argument to point to it as such) and
because capitalization of
w
would further privilege
the West.” Chicago Manual of Style Online, “Capitalization,”
last modified August 20, 2013,
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Capitalization/faq0034.html
;
however, I will continue
to refer to developed countries in western Europe and the United States as thewest,” despite the controversial,
contrived, and imprecise nature of the term because it serves as a helpful shorthand and also gestures to the
significant power that the west holds in the Chinese cultural imaginary, as well as the geopolitical dominance of
“westernactors.
4
Jennifer Hubbert, “Of Menace and Mimicry: The 2008 Beijing Olympics,”
39, no. 4
(2013): 421.
2
Academic and journalistic analyses often engage with the 2008 Opening Ceremony to the
extent that it affirmed the authority of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP):
Sinologist Florian
Schneider understands the ceremony as a performance of national solidarity that reinforced the
legitimacy of CCP rule, drawing comparisons to bloody Roman munera.
9
Similarly, Hong
Kong-based scholar Xu Guoqi likens the Opening Ceremony to the 1936 Berlin Olympics,
underscoring its function in projecting state power.
10
However, such comparisons overlook the
ceremony’s unique visual language. The layered references embedded in the ceremony’s
choreography were far more complex than many sinologists give credit for. My primary
methodology throughout this thesis is grounded in my readings of the ceremony’s symbolic
imagery, extrapolating from each key symbol the historical, cultural, and political context it
gestured to. While many academics are interested in using the ceremony to cast projections about
Chinas future and determine the merit of the country’s path to it, I am neither interested in
speculating nor making value judgments.
Rather
, I will examine how the Opening Ceremony represented
Chinas understanding of
itself. It functioned as a choreographed vision of the Chinese nation by planting Chinas modern
economic strength within a manufactured historical narrative, couched in socialist aesthetics
familiar to its populace. By staging a mass spectacle adorned with cultural symbols drawn from
Chinas early history, the ceremony positioned the CCP as both the inheritor of a millennia-old
civilization and the architect of Chinas modern resurgence. The ceremony was a manifesto of
Chinas national identity in the 21st century that expressed its complex negotiation between
neoliberal capitalism and state socialism. Beijing’s spectacle did not merely showcase national
10
Xu Guoqi,
Olympic Dreams: China and Sports: 18952008
(Harvard University Press, 2008), 227.
9
Florian Schneider,
Staging China: The Politics of
Mass Spectacle
(Leiden University Press, 2019), 20.
3
pride or authoritarian control; it actively redefined the Chinese nation as a unified whole. Past,
present, and future were seamlessly aligned with the states geopolitical aspirations.
If the ceremony provoked apprehension abroad, it may well signify Chinas success in
asserting geopolitical dominance
. However, western
fixations on the ceremony’s perceived
militarism distracted from the ceremony’s capitalist messaging. This oversight is significant
because
it was not Chinas military but Chinas turn
toward (state-controlled) capitalism that laid
the foundations for its rise. The power of the spectacle, as Guy Debord first theorized
in
Society
of the Spectacle
, lies in its ability to naturalize
modern capitalist values.
11
Decades before
Debord, Frankfurt theorist Siegfried Kracauer examined how capitalist industrial production was
embedded in the visual aesthetics of mass coordination in his 1927 essay on modernity and
capitalism, The Mass Ornament.
12
As I will explain
in Chapter One, the Opening Ceremony’s
choreographed displays brought to life the aesthetics of mass ornamentation that Kracauer first
described a century ago. His framework interprets mass spectacles as representations of
economic power, demonstrating technological sophistication through the animation of large
groups of people. In this way, the Opening Ceremony symbolically showcased Chinas proud
new role as a country of mass production. By also borrowing from the aesthetic of Maoist mass
spectacles, the ceremony rehearsed what Huang calls the illusory coexistence between socialism
and neoliberalism.
13
The ensconcing of neoliberal capitalism
within socialist aesthetics is central
to Beijing’s use of Kracauers mass ornament in the 2008 Opening Ceremony.
The glorification of industrial production, however, is not exclusive to capitalism. Since
he founded the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, Mao directed the country’s
13
Huang,
Urban Horror,
2.
12
Siegfried Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays
,
trans. Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1995), 7779.
11
Guy Debord,
The Society of the Spectacle
, trans.
Donald Nicholson-Smith (Zone Books, 1995), 36.
4
industrialization to catch up” with the western nations that once exploited it.
14
As scholar
Geremie Barmé notes, the Opening Ceremony elided reference to Maoism, though it wove
Chinas industrial development into other parts of Chinas historical narrative by foregrounding
ancient technological achievements, which were thematically structured around the canonical
four great inventions of antiquity: gunpowder, papermaking, movable type, and the compass.
15
This framing situated Chinas economic position in 2008 within a broader historical continuum,
rationalizing the CCPs trajectory toward global superpower status.
If, as Kracauer argues, the mass ornament aestheticizes the mechanisms of its own
production, then the Beijing Opening Ceremony offered a spectacular illusion of unity one
that, beneath its carefully choreographed surface, reflected the tensions and ambitions of Chinas
21st-century transformation. Chapter Two will examine how the ceremony invoked an imagined
past, selectively drawing from Confucian values as well as ancient technologies to craft a
historical narrative that legitimizes Chinas present while enhancing its soft power. Historians
Orville Schell and John Delury diagnose a recent shift in how Chinese politicians engage with
tradition: Although Mao’s government rejected Chinese traditional culture, the CCP now
assimilates it into state rhetoric in its pursuit of wealth and power.
16
Hubbert argues that the
Opening Ceremony leveraged invocations of tradition to set itself apart from the west, employing
essentialized tropes of Chinese culture.
17
However, these tropes align more with state rhetoric than with historical accuracy.
Political scientist Linus Hagström states that Chinas soft power strategy relies not only on
cultural symbolism but on appeals to a state-sanctioned, simplified version of Confucianism
17
Hubbert, “Of Menace and Mimicry,427.
16
Orville Schell and John Delury,
Wealt h and Power:
China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century
, 5.
15
Geremie R. Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and
8 August 2008
,”
The China Quarterly
197 (2009).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741009000046
14
Odd Arne Westad and Jian Chen,
The Great Transformation: China's Road from Revolution to Reform
(Yale University Press, 2024): 186.
5
particularly the Confucian value of harmony, which was the central theme of the 2008 Opening
Ceremony.
18
As Schneider writes, the conceptual frameworks
of Confucian thought provide
contemporaries with resources for their own political agendas, and the CCP has utilized its
interpretation of Confucianism to defend its modern nationalist program.
19
John Delury further
contends that in the lead-up to the Games, harmony” was weaponized in state policies targeting
Tibetans and Uyghurs.
20
Economist Andrew Martin Fischer
states that Tibetan protests against
ethnic erasure were exacerbated by widening economic disparities between Han developers and
Tibetans.
21
Pankaj Mishra confirms that harmony” is
a watchword for subservience to the state
as it undertakes its project of rapid modernization, which victimized Han Chinese as well as
Tibetans.
22
The 2008 Opening Ceremony also opened a window into Chinas projected trajectory,
capturing its aspirations at a pivotal historical moment. My conclusion will examine the
discourse surrounding Chinas future and examine how both western discourse on Chinas
growth and Chinas own approach to modernization have been shaped by colonial frameworks.
Barmé, Schell, Delury, and Xu seem to suggest that China should aspire to emulate
western governments. However, it was Chinas engagement with western economic models that
catalyzed its current conditions. To quote the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj
Žižek
, Rather than
an oriental-despotic distortion of capitalism, China should be seen today as a repetition of the
development of capitalism in EuropeChina developed quickly, not despite authoritarian
22
Pankaj Mishra, “At War with the Utopia of Modernity” in
China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance,
ed. Merkel-Hess, et al. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 41.
21
Andrew Martin Fischer,
The Disempowered Development
of Tibet in China: A Study in the Economics of
Marginalization
(Lexington Books, 2014), 11.
20
John Delury, “‘Harmonious’ in China.”
Policy Review
(Washington, D.C.)
, no. 148.
http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/magazines/harmonious-china/docview/216434587/se-2?accou
ntid=11311
19
Schneider,
Staging China,
178.
18
Linus Hagström, “Harmony and the Quest for Soft Power,
International Studies Review
22 (2020), 508.
6
communist rule but because of it.
23
Chinas marketization and labor exploitation are responses
to the demands of western countries, which often determine the path to financial success in the
21st century. There is no shortage of criticisms to make about the Chinese government. However,
part of my project is to illustrate that critiques of China should not be directed by neo-Cold War
rhetoric. Instead, they should address the ways that many of the problems with Chinese
governance stem from its assimilation of the guiding principles that direct liberal
24
western
nations.
Paradoxically, this rhetoric may have reinforced the lasting impact of the 2008 Games.
More than 16 years later, memories of the Opening Ceremony still endure. These memories are
preserved in op-eds, academic literature, and even in unexpected, everyday encounters. As it
happens, I came to this topic by chance. During the summer of 2024, I went to the M+ Museum
in Hong Kong to see an exhibit by an artist who I thought I would like to write my thesis about.
A kind elderly docent had been following me around, giving me the spiel on the artworks he
liked. Ah, Cao Fei, he remarked when I arrived at my desired exhibit. Did you know that she
made this after the 2008 Olympics? He launched into a story about how he visited Beijing
around that time, about a year before the Games began. Bulldozers were everywhere, and old
buildings were being razed and replaced with newer ones that were more modern and would be
more appealing to international visitors. I spent the whole day walking around the city, and by
24
I putliberal in quotations to acknowledge the multiple meanings of the word and the complicated
history of liberal humanism. In
The Robotic Imaginary:
The Human and the Price of Dehumanized Labor
, Jennifer
Rhee refers to the histories of dehumanized labor including Chinese coolie labor that gave rise to the
conception of liberal humanism in the west. In
The
Intimacies of Four Continents
, Lisa Lowe discusses
how it was
only through the exploitation of labor particularly through colonialism and slavery that the west could boast
an economy that supported liberal culture, as we define it. This is distinct from “liberal,as defined by the Freedom
House and other civil rights organizations that rate “people’s access to political rights and civil libertiesand
individual freedoms. Jennifer Rhee,
The Robotic Imaginary
the Human and the Price of Dehumanized Labor
(University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 4; Lisa Lowe,
Intimacies of the Four Continents
, (Duke University
Press,
2015), 2; Freedom House, “China: Country Profile:
https://freedomhouse.org/country/china
23
Slavoj Žižek, “
Three Notes on China: Past and Present
,”
positions: east asia cultures critique
19, no. 3
(2011): 716.
7
the end of the day, my shoes were covered in white ash. Everything in the city was. It was all
white. Then he smiled, thanked me for my time, and left.
8
CHAPTER ONE: Mathematical Majesty’
Beijing’s Bid
On July 13, 2001, Beijing won the bid to host the Summer Olympics for 2008.
25
It would
be the first time China was to host the Games and a perfect opportunity for the country to show
the world how rapidly it had grown in the past few decades. In a survey taken that year, 79
percent of Chinese respondents and about 90 percent of Beijing residents said that the coming
Games were important to them personally.
26
According
to
China Daily
, a newspaper owned by
the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party, 31,000 parents named their children
Aoyun
(
奥运
),
the Mandarin translation for Olympic
Games, and
Shen’ao
(
申奥
),
the
translation for bid for the Olympics, between 2001 and 2008.
27
Preparations began in earnest over the next seven years. Xi Jinping, who was rapidly
rising through the ranks of the CCP, chaired a governing committee overseeing the arrangements
for the Games.
28
Olympics organizers invested heavily
in environmental clean-up efforts and
ordered the construction of 31 venues, railroads, and airports.
29
The Beijing Olympic committee
selected Zhang Yimou, one of Chinas most acclaimed film directors, to be Chief Director of the
Olympic ceremonies.
30
Zhang had a budget of USD 300
million far greater than the budget of
30
Zhang was the director of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, though for this paper, I will only be
referring to his Opening Ceremony.
29
Geoffrey A. Fowler and Stacy Meichtry, “China Counts the Cost of Hosting the Olympics,
The Wall
Street Journal
, July 16, 2008; Xuefei Ren, “Airpocalypse
in Beijing and Delhi,” in
Governing the Urban in
China
and India
(Princeton University Press), 94.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121614671139755287https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121614671139755287
28
“China Forms Top-Level Leading Group for Olympics Preparations,
Consulate General for the People’s
Republic of China in New York,
March 12, 2008.
http://newyork.china-consulate.gov.cn/eng/xw/200803/t20080312_4686826.htm
27
China’s History is Spelled out in Baby Names
,”
China
Daily
, June 24, 2014.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/2014-06/24/content_17613691.htm
26
Tom Rosentiel,
An Enthusiastic China Welcomes the
Olympics
,”
Pew Research Center
, August 5, 2008.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2008/08/05/an-enthusiastic-china-welcomes-the-olympics/
25
Jere Longman, “
Beijing Winds Bid for 2008 Olympic
Games
,”
The New York Times
, July 14, 2001.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/14/sports/olympics-beijing-wins-bid-for-2008-olympic-games.html
9
any film he had made to make the grandest Opening Ceremony the world had ever seen.
31
After around 16,000 performers were selected, rehearsals began in 2007 in the southern suburbs
of Beijing.
32
I believe on August 8th, you’ll perform
even better, surprising the world and
making the Chinese people proud, Zhang told his troupe of thousands gathered for ceremony
rehearsals, sweat dripping from his temples as he stood on a stage overlooking the crowd.
33
These rehearsals were a secret well kept, conducted in a secure Olympics compound.
34
Beijing’s meticulous preparation paid off. In the years that followed, the Opening
Ceremony was remembered as a feat of unprecedented scale and coordination. It showcased a
new, modern China and is often referred to as the country’s coming-out ceremony, symbolizing
its emergence as a global superpower.
35
Guy Debord
claims that the spectacle visualizes the
value system of its producers; it is a worldview that has actually been materialized.
36
Chinas
coming out was shaped by its embrace of global capitalism, which was celebrated by the 2008
Opening Ceremony. In the following chapter, I will explore how Chinas capitalist turn entailed
its metamorphosis into the world’s factory, becoming a locus of cheap goods, materials, and
labor. The 2008 Opening Ceremony aestheticized this metamorphosis, grounding it in the
socialist aesthetic tradition of Maoist mass spectacles. As Erin Huang contends, this ideological
36
Debord,
The Society of the Spectacle,
7.
35
Joe McDonald, “
President Xi Jinping, Chinas ‘chairman
AP News
, February 3, 2022.
https://apnews.com/article/winter-olympics-china-president-xi-jinping-b5aeeed14e662e72570df15076290830
34
David Barboza,
Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s
Close-Up,
The New York Times,
August 7, 2008.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/sports/olympics/08guru.html
33
Gu,
The Everlasting Flame
; BOCOG, “Preparation for
the Games”
32
Gu Jun (director),
The Everlasting Flame
, International
Olympic Committee, 2009. 1 hr., 40 min (18:00);
Preparation for the Games: New Beijing Great Olympics:
Official Report of the Beijing 2008 Olympics Games
(Volume III)
,” BOCOG Media & Communications
Department, May 2010.
https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Reports/Official%20Past%20Games%20Reports/Summer/ENG/2008-RO-S
-Beijing-vol3.pdf
31
Osgood,
What Everyone Got Wrong About the Last Beijing
Olympics Opening Ceremony
.”
10
hybridization has tangible effects: The imaginary coexistence of socialism and capitalism
rehearses a futurity… that is actively reshaping the lived conditions of the present.
37
The Opening Ceremony is often remembered by western scholars and journalists as a
symbolic illustration of Chinas authoritarianism. Film critic Robert Ebert, for example,
compared the ceremony to Leni Riefenstahls infamous Nazi propaganda film,
Triumph of the
Will
.
38
But such a reading misunderstands the kind
of power that the ceremony projected. As my
close reading will demonstrate, the 2008 Opening Ceremony was not a deliberate demonstration
of military authority, but rather a show of mastery over the new global economic system as the
world’s manufacturing center.
39
As Debord notes,
although spectacles can [buttress] state
power, the spectacle more often characterizes bureaucratic capitalism.
40
Zhang’s Opening
Ceremony affirms the principles of capitalist production through mass choreography, which
Siegfried Kracauer understands as an aestheticization of the machinelike routine of mass
production.
Of course, Chinas economic transformation unfolded in a post-Fordist era, one far
removed from Kracauers own.
41
Still, viewing the Opening
Ceremony through his critique of the
mass ornament reveals how it reinforces both capitalist logic and state power within Chinas
unique model of state-controlled capitalism.
41
Social scientists typically identify post-Fordist production by a reliance on information technology and
the global economy. However, the use of this term is still debated. See: Bob Jessop, “Fordism,”
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
, accessed March 2, 2025,
https://www.britannica.com/money/Fordism
.
40
Debord,
The Society of the Spectacle,
36.
39
James Fallows, “
China Makes, the World Takes
,”
The
Atlantic,
July 2007.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/07/china-makes-the-world-takes/305987/
38
Ebert,
Zhang Yimous gold medal
.”
37
Huang,
Urban Horror,
2.
11
Let The Games Begin
The Opening Ceremony kicked off at 8:08 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month of
2008.
42
This was deliberate: Eight is lucky in Chinese
numerology, and the Games were planned
to the second.
43
The video broadcast of the ceremony
captured the countdown for the Games,
signaled by a screen-projected animation of a Chinese sundial, invoking Beijing’s splashy
sundial-shaped monument that was constructed for its millennium celebrations eight years
earlier.
44
Meanwhile, a series of short-range fireworks circled the arena like shooting stars. On
the field, a low rumbling noise played as square lights started turning on in quick succession. The
camera moved in to show that these were not decorative lights, but rather 2,008 drums fitted with
LED strips. The rumbling noise, likened to rolling spring thunder
45
was, in fact, a drumroll.
Then, the lights went dark, and the drummers stood motionless, poised for their next fit of buzz
rolling. The crowd roared as the drums, each now a node of a giant timer, lit up to form numbers
counting down to the start of the Games. It was as if the event were a magical one, ordained by
the heavens and aligned with the firework-simulated stars. The audience watched in anticipation,
as though witnessing the fulfillment of cosmic fate.
45
U.S. Department of Defense,
Multimedia gallery
.”
https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001150071/
44
China: Monument to celebrate 5000 years of civilisation
.”
AP Archive
, video, 2:01.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1Fz7kWPbko
43
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, “
Dreams and Nightmares
,” in
Dayan, Daniel, and Monroe Price.
Owning the
Olympics: Narratives of the New China
, 2008.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/book.6372
42
There was a competition among some parents to see who could give birth to a child at that exact time.
One expectant father
told
China Daily
,
“If my wife
is lucky enough to deliver anOlympic baby,’ the luck means
something more than family joy.”Addie Chan, “Race to have an ‘Olympic baby,’”
China Daily
, October 12,
2007.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-10/12/content_6170207.htm
12
Figure 1: The countdown for the Games. Each node of light is one drum. Full Opening
Ceremony from Beijing 2008, posted by Olympics, YouTube video, 4:18:00, August 8, 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bufV3EgyPGU&t=1925s
Figure 2: The firework display for the Opening Ceremony, representing the invention of
gunpowder. Olympics.
13
Figure 3: Drum rehearsal.
Gu Jun (Director),
The Everlasting
Flame
, International Olympic
Committee, 2009. 1 hour 41 minutes.
https://olympics.com/en/original-series/episode/beijing-2008-official-film-the-everlasting-flame
Figure 4: The drumming routine. Olympics.
The Games were marketed as just this. Government officials framed the 2008 Olympics
as the fulfillment of a century-old wish one that Geremie Barmé notes was powerfully
attractive to both Chinese and international media outlets.
46
In his book
Staging China: The
46
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
.”
14
Politics of Mass Spectacle
, Florian Schneider writes that Official slogans about Chinas
hundred-year-old Olympic Dream resonated with many Chinese citizens, especially since such
phrases evoked images of an earlier China that had violently and disruptively modernised amidst
wars and foreign colonial interventions.
47
This rhetoric
casts Chinas modernization as an
ordained destiny one that, at last, was unfolding without bloodshed. This destiny aligned with
the CCPs grand historical narrative: Imperial China, once East Asias economic and cultural
center, was among the wealthiest kingdoms in the world. Government officials characterized
Chinas rapid growth as a return to the natural order.
48
After enduring the so-called Century of
Humiliation” at the hands of western colonial powers, war with Japan and the Kuomintang, and
decades of upheaval under Mao, China was finally a host for the Games, an event that
epitomised modern internationalism, Schneider writes.
49
And what a stage it was. The 2008
Games attracted the largest television audience in Olympic history, with 3.6 billion viewers
about 53 percent of the world’s population watching at least one minute of coverage.
50
After
the end of the countdown, Chairman Hu Jintao stood before his immense international crowd, the
first Chinese politician to have the privilege of initiating the Opening Ceremony. Beside him,
International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge watched stone-faced as Hu smiled
and waved.
50
IOC, “
Games of the XXIX Olympiad, Beijing 2008 Global
Television and Online Media Report
,”
September 2009.
https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Games/Summer-Games/Games-Beijing-20
08-Olympic-Games/IOC-Marketing-and-Broadcasting-Various-files/Global-Television-and-Online-Media-Report-B
eijing-2008.pdf
49
Schneider,
Staging China,
20.
48
This grand narrative is also a way the CCP legitimizes its one-party rule: “The CCP crafted a narrative
around the Century of Humiliation that legitimized its authority, portraying itself as the only party able to withstand
foreign intervention and alleviate the Chinese suffering caused by outside aggressors. According to this national
narrative, the CCP was the only government that could return China to its former glory and rectify the losses
experienced by China, justifying the one-party system.Jordan Lac, “The Century of Humiliation and the Century
After,
Brown Political Review,
January 26, 2024.
47
Schneider,
Staging China,
20.
15
The drummers began their act. They opened their arms to the sky, vocalizing in harmony.
They wore long silver robes accented with red, an auspicious color in Chinese tradition, their
foreheads marked with a red stripe. Their drums were modeled after the ancient bronze
fou
(
)
drum. In perfect synchronization, they turned their heads and bent forward, striking the
drumhead with the palms of their hands. Then, they turned the other way, called out once more,
and struck the drum with the opposite hand. The rhythm pumped through the stadium like a
beating heart not just from the drumming itself but from the synchronized movement and
breath that animated it. The drummers moved their bodies in synchrony with their breath. As
they bent down and leaned forward, they raised their eyes to the sky in supplication with
unwavering smiles. The drummers were more than musicians; they were the instruments. And
drumming was only part of their dance they brushed their hands across their drums, caressing
them before miming the motions of swimming, their heads tilting as if coming up for air. As they
hit their drums with increasing force, the camera angle widened, revealing the full scale of the
performance.
Indeed, the most impressive part of this act is not the music nor the ability of any
individual drummer: it is the sheer number of people involved in the production. The drummers
chanted in unison, repeating the Confucian proverb, Is it not a joy to meet friends who come
from afar? before they drew glowing red drumsticks and swept them across the drums in a
cleaning motion. The lights went out. The drumsticks glowed like marching footprints. Suddenly,
29 footprint-shaped fireworks ignited in quick succession across the Beijing skyline, each one
marking an Olympiad, creating the trail of a giant invisible ghost. Only five minutes had passed
since the start of the countdown.
16
Figure 5: The ceremony’s firework footprints. Olympics.
Martial Arts
This impressive start set the tone for the remaining four hours of the ceremony, which
featured dozens more fireworks and thousands of performers. It was seductively maximalist in
both form and scale. Live NBC commentators deemed the performance awe-inspiring and
perhaps a little intimidating.
51
Many observers framed
the performance in militaristic terms.
The drummers, after all, were not professional performers but soldiers from the Peoples
Liberation Army (PLA). For the ceremony, they swapped their fatigues for elaborate robes
more futuristic monk than military recruit.
52
Sourcing
drummers from the PLA was likely a
pragmatic move: already disciplined in drill exercises, soldiers required less training and no
additional pay.
Yet, few spectators knew of or remarked on the PLA affiliation. Instead, perceptions of
militarism stemmed from broader skepticism of the Chinese state. In his book
Olympic Dreams,
published before the Games, Xu Guoqi warned: The PRC, which has been obsessed with
52
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
.”
51
Hubbert, “Of Menace and Mimicry,410.
17
internationalizing its economy and international acceptance, must make sure its propaganda
machine will not overdo its spin. Will the Games strengthen the Chinese party-state as the Berlin
Games invigorated the Hitler government?
53
Days after
the Opening Ceremony,
New Yorker
staff writer Anthony Lane asked: What kind of society is it that can afford to make patterns out
of its people?
54
He continued, Nobody will ever surpass
the mathematical majesty of that night
in Beijing, and, in retrospect, that may be a good thing.
55
Like Xu, Lane compared the Opening
Ceremony to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, a commonly cited example of how spectacle can serve
authoritarian nationalism.
These interpretations may be shaped by western preconceptions of China note Lanes
reference to the drummers mathematical precision. In
The China Fantasy
, James Mann
warned of such tropes: Before and during the Beijing Olympics of 2008, you will be bombarded
with stereotypes about China that have accumulated over hundreds of years.
56
A double
standard is also at play. On the Olympic stage, displays of nationalism are usually excused, even
expected not compared to the Third Reich. Notably, 2008 was the first year the Games were
hosted in an East Asian country without U.S. military bases, suggesting that perceptions of the
Opening Ceremony as threatening” stemmed from a broader anxiety over the shifting global
order.
57
Critical reception was compounded by the historic
geopolitical tensions between China
and the west.
58
Jeffrey Wasserstrom refers to the negative
discourse of China as part of the
American China Nightmare, a cultural counterpoint to the American China Dream, both
58
Brownell, “The Beijing Olympics as a Turning Point?”
57
Susan Brownell, “The Beijing Olympics as a Turning Point? Chinas First Olympics in East Asian
Perspective.”
Japan Focus
7, no. 23.
56
James Mann,
The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain
Away Chinese Repression
(Viking, 2007).
55
Lane,
The Only Games in Town
.”
54
Anthony Lane,
The Only Games in Town: Week One at
the Olympics
,”
The New Yorker,
August 15,
2008, 28.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/25/the-only-games-in-town
53
Xu,
Olympic Dreams,
227.
18
shaped by stereotypes that frame U.S. perceptions of China.
59
Vilifying China fuels American
nationalism, just as anti-western rhetoric has historically reinforced Chinese nationalism.
In this vein, Zhang’s creative team created a spectacle that functioned as a business
proposal that was meant to be inviting and assertive, not coercive or menacing. Although
Chinese symbols of militancy were invoked, they were also inverted. The most direct nod to
Chinese martial tradition came midway through the ceremony, when 2,008
Tai Chi masters
formed coordinated, geometric patterns thematically aligned with the dance of the drummers and
other preceding acts.
60
However, this display was not
widely seen as a threat. Instead, it drew on
Tai Chis connection to the elements and the harmony between body and environment. A child’s
drawing of a smiling sun over bright, crayon-colored mountains was raised above the Tai Chi
practitioners, while a burst of colorful birds was projected before them. Similarly, the drummers
at the ceremony’s opening were not typical military drummers. Their coordination of breath and
movement resembled martial arts choreography more than modern military drills. The
fou
drum
they beat was likely not a militaristic drum but a form of post-dinner entertainment for the
ancients. Scholars debate the
fou
s original use,
with some suggesting it was used in rituals or
repurposed from wine vessels.
61
Other parts of the ceremony made direct references to military technology while similarly
subverting expectations, using martial aesthetics to create an alluring rather than threatening
display. The most striking example was the extensive use of fireworks to represent gunpowder,
one of the four great inventions of ancient China. The footstep-shaped fireworks represented
61
“Beijing's Olympic Venues to Be Used for Public Benefit.
China Daily
, August 30, 2008.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-08/30/content_6983940.htm
;
Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix,
AZ.
60
Art performance of Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony
showcases Chinese culture
,”
Xinhua
, August
8, 2008.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080812013848/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/08/content_9054650.htm
59
Wasserstrom,
Dreams and Nightmares.
19
the heritage of the Games and inserted Beijing into the Olympic tradition as the 29th step.
Here, gunpowder, vis-à-vis its depiction in the firework display, became a symbol of unity and
continuity rather than destruction.
We may further access the symbolism of the ceremony by using Kracauers theory about
mass choreography and collective aesthetics. Like the Tiller Girl kickline Kracauer describes,
62
the Opening Ceremony presented a highly regimented yet non-militaristic display of geometric
human movement. The meaning of the living star formations in the stadiums is not that of
military exercises, writes Kracauer, insisting the formations have no meaning beyond
themselves, and the masses above whom they rise are not a moral unit like a company of
soldiers.
63
Mass spectacles like these are widely
accepted and digested. As Kracauer notes:
These extravagant spectacles, which are staged by many sorts of people and not just girls and
stadium crowds, have long since become an established form.
64
The audience, too, is part of the
mass spectacle: The regularity of their patterns is cheered by the masses, themselves arranged
by the stands in tier upon ordered tier.
65
Kracauer
likens such spectacles to the mechanized
coordination of the Fordist assembly line: Everyone does his or her task on the conveyor belt,
performing a partial function without grasping the totality.
66
The effect of such spectacles is the
aestheticization, romanticization, and normalization of capitalism, which requires the
disaggregation of the body into its parts before they are reincorporated into the apparatus of
industrial production.
Writing in the final years of the Weimar Republic,
Kracauer explored how mass culture
and spectacle shaped collective consciousness, particularly as mechanized labor and rationalized
66
Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament,
79.
65
Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament,
77.
64
Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament,
77.
63
Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament,
77.
62
The Tiller Girls were a popular dance troupe in the 1890s, the predecessors to the modern Rockettes.
20
production permeated everyday life. Fordist mass production restructured industrial work and
found expression in cultural forms most notably synchronized dance performances, which
Kracauer saw as emblematic of the modern mass ornament. The aestheticization of Fordist
production, however, is not uniquely capitalist. Mass spectacles were a central tool in Mao’s
socialist aesthetics; he and senior CCP members regularly orchestrated political parades.
67
North
Korea, too, has perfected mass coordination with its annual Arirang Mass Games originally
inspired by Stalinist mass displays featuring elaborate card stunts and highly-choreographed
gymnastics performed by thousands.
68
Yet, as Barmé
notes, Zhang made a concerted effort to
avoid referencing Maoist-era parades and the Arirang Games, though he would eventually
claim, perhaps with a measure of ironic pride, that only North Korea could have outdone his
display of co-ordinated mass movement.
69
These parallels
in aestheticizing industrial production
do not imply ideological alignment but rather a shared valorization of modernization, an
aspiration common to both Marxist-Leninist and capitalist states.
70
On another level, borrowing
the visual language of socialist mass choreography allows the ceremony to endorse capitalist
production subtly, orchestrating the imaginary coexistence of socialism and capitalism that
Huang refers to.
This projected coexistence portrayed by the 2008 Opening Ceremony may have been
inspired by the first Games that Chinese athletes and politicians attended, the 1984 Los Angeles
70
“Based on Marxs thesis that development of the forces of production is the key factor in social progress,
the main task of progressive forces is to create (or maintain) the conditions for fast ‘modernization,’ while avoiding
all forms of instability.Žižek,
Three Notes on
China: Past and Present
,” 719.
69
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
”; Ying Zhang and Chen Xia,
Zhang Yimou jiemi
kaimushi
”(
张艺谋揭秘开幕式
”),
translated as “Zhang Yimou
reveals the secrets of the Opening Ceremony,”
Nanfang zhoumo
(
南⽅周末
), “
Olympics special,August
14, 2008, p. A6.
68
Let Morning Shine over Pyongyang:
The Future-Oriented Nationalism of North Korea’s
Arirang
Mass Games
,”
Asian Music
44, no. 1 (2013):
3.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/amu.2013.0010
; Jonathan
Watts,
“Welcome to the strangest show on earth
,”
The Guardian
,
October 1, 2005.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/01/northkorea
67
Hung Chang-Tai, “Maos Parades: State Spectacles in China in the 1950s.
The China Quarterly
, 2007,
411.
21
Olympics.
71
As journalist Miles Osgood notes, the LA Games were one of the most garishly
designed and overtly corporate Olympics ever.
72
Serving
as a cultural front in the Cold War
between the U.S. and the USSR, the 1984 Olympics became one of the most profitable in history,
yielding a $233 million profit from a modest budget through brand sponsorships and advertising
that produced revenue as well as projected capitalist aesthetics.
73
Anthropologist Susan Brownell
writes that the LA Olympics inspired a greater embrace of consumerist aesthetics in Chinas
1987 National Games, a precursor to what would come in 2008.
74
Though the 2008 Beijing
Games did not adopt the same overtly capitalist style as the LA Games, they were far more
extravagant, generating only $3.6 billion in revenue against $40 billion in costs.
75
The 2008 Beijing Opening Ceremony thus presents a paradox: it projects a mass
spectacle rooted in socialist aesthetics to highlight Chinas market-driven modernization. While
borrowing some visual language from socialist mass performances, it avoids direct references to
Mao, constructing an image of China that reconciles ideological contradictions. At the same
time, the ceremony ensures continuity with its communist origins, as evidenced by the absence
of branding and corporate advertising, while affirming Chinas integration into a globalized
capitalist economy. The Games do not merely represent Chinas economic rise but actively
aestheticize it, transforming industrial production, mass coordination, and national ambition into
a seamless, consumable image for both domestic and international audiences.
75
James McBride, Noah Berman, and Melissa Manno, “
The
Economics of Hosting the Olympic Games
The Council of Foreign Relations
. July 20, 2024.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-games
74
Susan Brownell,
Training the body for China: Sports
in the moral order of the peoples Republic
,
(University of Chicago Press, 1995).
73
Les Carpenter,
The miracle of 1984: How Los Angeles
saved the dying Olympics
,”
The Washington
Post
, July 21, 2024.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2024/07/21/1984-olympics-los-angeles-us-summer-games/
72
Osgood,
What Everyone Got Wrong About the Last Beijing
Olympics Opening Ceremony
.”
71
Miles Osgood.
What Everyone Got Wrong About the Last Beijing Olympics’ Opening Ceremony
.”
Slate
. February 3, 2022.
https://slate.com/culture/2022/02/2008-beijing-olympics-opening-ceremony-zhang-yimou-meaning.html
22
An Empire of Production
The economic transformation that the ceremony captured began just 30 years before the
Games.
76
In 1978, two years after Mao’s death, Deng
Xiaoping became Chinas new chairman.
Under Deng, the CCP embarked on a transition from Maoism to a market-driven economic
system, which he referred to as socialism with Chinese characteristics.
77
This era of Opening
Up and Reform entailed relaxed economic restrictions and the creation of Special Economic
Zones (SEZs) areas of free trade designed to attract foreign businesses.
78
The impact of these
reforms cannot be overstated: the percentage of impoverished villagers dropped from 40.65
percent before 1978 to 4.75 percent in 2001.
79
China also became increasingly integrated into international trade.
80
Collaboration
between American and Chinese business interests led to Chinas rebranding as an empire of
production, just as America was becoming an empire of consumption.
81
The CCP
intentionally devalued the RMB to lower Chinese prices in the global market, boosting its
competitiveness.
82
The competitive prices of Chinese
goods and labor are often cited as one of
the key drivers of Chinas post-Mao rapid economic growth under President Jiang Zemin and
82
Katarzyna Twarowska, “Reforms of China’s Exchange Rate Regime and the Renminbi
Internationalization,”
Ekonomia Prawo
18, no. 4 (2019):
531–556.
81
Maier,
Among Empires
; Elizabeth OBrien Ingleson,
Made in China: When US-China Interests
Converged to Transform Global Trade
(Yale University
Press, 2010), 266. See also: Judith Stein,
Pivotal
Decade:
How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the 1970s
(Harvard University Press, 2024), 23–50.
80
Charles S. Maier,
Among Empires: American Ascendancy
and Its Predecessors
(Harvard University
Press, 2006), 191–284.
79
Loren Brandt, and Thomas G. Rawski,
Chinas Great
Economic Transformation
, (Cambridge University
Press, 2008), 3. However, there is room for debate on this common state-centric narrative. Odd Arne Westad and
Jian Chen contend in their 2024 book
The Great Transformation
that Chinas economic miracle was a bottom-up
transformation, and that “the revolution from below did more to change China than any orders issued by the CCP.
Westad and Chen,
The Great Transformation,
306.
78
Justin Yifu Lin, Cai Fang, and Li Zhou,
The China
Miracle: Development Strategy and Economic
Reform
(The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press,
2003), 193.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1fj84hd
.
77
Deng Xiaoping,
Building Socialism with a Specifically
Chinese Character
,”
People's Daily
, October 1,
1984.
http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-4/deng-xiaoping-socialism-with-chinese-characteristics
76
There are valid claims that China has always leaned capitalist, even under Mao. See: Jacob Eyferth,
“Consumption, Consumerism, Capitalism,
PRC History
Review 5,
no. 1 (October 2020): 1–26.
23
Premier Zhu Rongji, China emerged as the factory of the world.
83
Just five months after
Beijing won the bid to host the Games, China joined the World Trade Organization.
84
By 2008,
Made in China labels adorned countless consumer goods, from the shirts tourists wore to the
Games to the televisions that streamed the Opening Ceremony even if, as was often the case,
parts of these goods were made in other countries.
85
Chinas national rebranding as an essential
participant in the global economy was reinforced by the branding of these Made in China
labels.
However, maintaining competitive prices comes at the expense of the livelihoods of the
Chinese laborers who produce cheap goods for export, a status quo upheld by the government
through strict anti-union and anti-labor activism policies.
86
Anthropologist David Harvey
describes Chinas new economic policy, with its reconstitution of class power, as
state-controlled neoliberalism rather than socialism with Chinese characteristics as the CCP
insists.
87
In the post-Mao period, ideological commitment
took a backseat to national prosperity,
a sentiment famously encapsulated by Deng’s justification for reform: crossing the river by
87
David Harvey,
A Brief History of Neoliberalism
(Oxford
University Press, 2005), 120-151; Harveys
definition of neoliberalism is as follows:Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic
practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets,
and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such
practices.” Harvey,
A Brief History of Neoliberalism,
2.
86
Tim Pringle,
Trade Unions in China: The Challenge
of Labour Unrest
(Routledge, 2011).
85
Ingleson, 266; David Barboza, “
Made in China Labels
Dont Tell the Whole Story
,”
The New York
Times
, February 6, 2006.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/business/worldbusiness/made-in-china-labels-dont-tell-whole-story.html
;
Jenny Chan and Ngai Pun, “
Suicide as Protest for the
New Generation of Chinese Migrant Workers: Foxconn,
Global Capital, and the State
,”
The Asia-Pacific Journal:
Japan Focus
, September 13, 2010.
https://apjjf.org/jenny-chan/3408/article
84
Weysyee Goh and Wee-Yeap Lau, Impact of Structural Change on Chinas Exports Post-WTO
Accession.
Contemporary Chinese Political Economy
and Strategic Relations
6, no. 2: 741.
83
Twarowska, Reforms of Chinas Exchange Rate Regime and the Renminbi Internationalization; Schell
and Delury,
Wealt h and Power
, 328.
24
feeling the stones.
88
Chinas post-reform economic success has much to do with the global rise
in neoliberalism in advanced capitalist economies.
89
It is important to recognize that Chinas suppression of labor rights was integral to its
assimilation into the global economic system, gaining a foothold by setting prices below the fair
cost of labor. Chinas reputation as the world’s factory came at the expense of Chinese wage
laborers, benefiting foreign (typically western) companies and consumers.
90
We can understand
the experiences of Chinese assembly line workers within Kracauers framework. Zhang Lijia, a
former worker at a missile factory in Liming, wrote in her memoir that the rush home resembled
a surging tide of factory workers, each bobbing black head another faceless part of the
Liming factory machine.
91
A separate account comes from Li Hai, a 19-year-old migrant worker
at Foxconn, a Shenzhen-based manufacturing company for electronics, who jumped to his death
during a wave of suicide attempts at the two main production facilities in 2010.
92
In his suicide
note, he wrote that he found fitting into the robotic assembling process, at high speed and to a
precision measured down to the second, most difficult.
93
Outside observers echo this
mechanical precision demanded of Chinese factory workers. A writer for
Audio Technology
who
visited a Shenzhen International Audio Group factory wrote: This was a by hand’
mass-production line where everyones job was carefully supervised, where quality control had
93
Chan and Pun, “Suicide as Protest.
92
Chan and Pun, “Suicide as Protest.
91
Zhang Lijia,
Socialism Is Great!: A Worker's Memoir
of the New China
, (Atlas, 2008), 49.
90
Chan and Pun, “Suicide as Protest.
89
Keo, “Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones.
88
Bernard Z. Keo,
Crossing the River by Feeling the
Stones: Deng Xiaoping in the Making of Modern
China
,” Association for Asian Studies, May 24, 2023.
https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/crossing-the-river-by-feeling-the-stones-deng-xiaoping-in-th
e-making-of-modern-china/
.
25
been adopted with a systematic mastery and sophistication that I had arrogantly assumed only
existed in places like Germany and Switzerland.
94
While Chinas reforms came in the post-Fordist age, they mirror a similar mechanization
of human labor that Kracauer described over half a century earlier, with employees on the
assembly line performing a partial function without grasping the totality.
95
Crucially, this
conveyor belt operates based on scientific principles that ostensibly optimize efficiency and
productivity. Organization is key: The organization stands above the masses, a monstrous figure
whose creator withdraws it from the eyes of its bearers.
96
Li Hais characterization of the
robotic process reflects Kracauers claims that the assembly line workers do not become
masters of the machine but instead become machine-like, and that they are henchmen of the
technological excesses.
97
The similarities between these accounts and those of Amazon workers in America are
striking.
98
My point here is neither to localize the
problems of global capitalism nor to pity its
victims, but to demonstrate how recurring themes of industrial production transcend borders and
how global audiences have internalized the aesthetic reflex of the rationality to which the
prevailing economic system aspires, as Kracauer writes.
99
It is this aesthetic reflex” that
99
Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament,
79.
98
“Here is an uncomfortable truth Im waiting for some Chinese official to point out: The woman from the
hinterland working in Shenzhen is arguably better off economically than an American in Chicago living on
minimum wage. She can save most of what she makes and feel she is on the way up; the American cant and
doesn’t. Over the next two years, the minimum wage in the United States is expected to rise to $7.25 an hour.
Assuming a 40-hour week, thats just under $1,200 per month, or about 10 times the Chinese factory wage. But
that’s before payroll deductions and the cost of food and housing, which are free or subsidized in Chinas factory
towns.” James Fallows, “China Makes, the World Takes.” See also: Mandy McClure and Victoria Godinez
US
Department of Labor finds Amazon exposed workers to unsafe conditions, ergonomic hazards at three more
warehouses in Colorado, Idaho, New York,
US Department
of Labor
, February 1, 2023.
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osha/osha20230201-0
97
Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament,
70.
96
Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament,
79.
95
Kracauer,
The Mass Ornament,
79.
94
Andy Stewart,
Made in China
,”
Audio Technology
,
36.
https://www.audiotechnology.com/PDF/FEATURES/AT36_IAG_factory_MadeInChina.pdf
26
Beijing’s Opening Ceremony catered to in gestures towards the prevailing economic system
that both western audiences and Chinese performers shared, even if their functions within that
system differed. The relationship between the ceremony’s audience and performers mirrored the
relationship between China and the west within said economic system: that of the consumer and
the producer, respectively.
Made in China
At times, China is privileged by its position as factory of the world. China largely
avoided the devastation wrought by the global financial crisis, which began to unravel in late
2007 and ultimately imploded a month after the end of the Games with the bankruptcy of
Lehman Brothers in mid-September of 2008.
100
Of course,
China did not entirely escape the
crisis its heavy reliance on the export sector resulted in the closure of tens of thousands of
factories.
101
Still, Chinas financial sector remained
mostly intact because it had large foreign
reserves and did not deal with as many derivatives as western markets.
102
China also mitigated
damage with a stimulus package, part of which was directed to repair damage from the 2008
Wenchuan Earthquake, alongside aggressive fiscal and loose monetary policy.
103
Jennifer Hubbert argues that the 2008 Games marked a turning point in the global
financial order, observing that many countries now bypass western-dominated institutions such
as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and turn to China to bolster their
development. Hubbert views this shift as a sign of a changing power field” and suggests it
signals a future of greatness for China rather than modernity not quite.
104
The Opening
104
Hubbert, “Of Menace and Mimicry,421.
103
Yu eh ,
A Stronger China
.”
102
Yu eh ,
A Stronger China
.”
101
Chan and Pun, “Suicide as Protest.
100
Linda Yueh,
A Stronger China
.”
International Monetary
Fund
47, no. 2 (June 2010).
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2010/06/yueh.htm
27
Ceremony services this image of Chinas singular, and decidedly non-western, greatness. Again,
the ceremony was void of corporate branding; while the committee received branding
sponsorships, all partnerships and advertisements were displayed off-site.
105
The spectacle produced by the Opening Ceremony was itself a product consumed by
billions. As Guy Debord notes, The time spent consuming imagesis both the particular
terrain where the spectacles mechanisms are most fully implemented and the general goal that
those mechanisms present, the focus and epitome of all particular consumptions.
106
Ironically,
Chinas depiction of industrial production was also a good to be consumed that was Made in
China. Moreover, the ceremony’s special focus on Chinas technological advancements
rather than its cultural developments, such as art and philosophy is significant. By centering
Chinas four great inventions, the ceremony underscored how tools made in China have long
influenced western historical progress.
The portrayal of these inventions through dance emphasizes the role of physical labor in
their creation. The act representing papermaking” did not center paper as a material. Rather, the
ceremony used the paper as a stage, stressing its role as a medium for human creation. A giant
scroll of canvas was suspended from above as an ensemble of black-costumed dancers created an
ink wash
shan shui
(
⼭⽔
)
with brushes hidden in their
sleeves. They rolled and slid across the
canvas, mimicking the strokes of an inked paintbrush. The painting itself is nothing remarkable,
more a child’s attempt at a landscape than a traditional
shan shui
painting. The dance, instead, is
the product, and the art lies in the use of the body as the tool of production. Such capitalization
of human labor is both the result and romanticized aesthetic under Kracauers principles.
106
Debord,
The Society of the Spectacle,
83.
105
BOCOG,
Preparation for the Games
.”
28
Figure 6: The papermaking act. Each dancer is an ink brush. Olympics.
Figure 7: The movable type act. Each performer is a block of type. Olympics.
The ceremony’s portrayal of movable type follows these same principles. The typeset
was scaled up to awe-inspiring proportions; the blocks of type moved in precise, rhythmic
waves, rippling like water. The typeset functioned as a pinscreen, forming different renditions of
he
(
),
the Chinese character for harmony. At the
end of the number, the blocks opened,
29
revealing that the typeset was not operated pneumatically but by 897 performers in boxes. It was
a purposeful, gleeful reveal of the Mechanical Turk.
107
The compass act presented the most explicit reference to Chinas wealth. The invention
of the compass was visualized through the exploits of Ming Chinese admiral Zheng He, who led
the Yongle Emperors vast maritime fleet.
108
Zheng Hes
famed voyages are remembered for
promoting Chinese soft power, showcasing the kingdoms wealth of resources and goods to
expand its tributary system.
109
His junks were laden
with deposits of gold, silver, porcelain, and
silk, which were traded for novelties from abroad.
110
Like the preceding acts, the compass
performance employed synchronized movement as its primary visual. Hundreds of dancers
wielding giant oars moved in unison to simulate the motion of massive ships at sea, their bodies
standing in for the vessels. The massive scale of coordination of the dancers oars evoked the
grandeur of Zheng Hes junks, supposedly once the largest ships in the world. References to
ancient and imperial China telegraph the CCPs hopes for a renewed age of prosperity and
growth one that reimagined the Middle Kingdom at the center of the world once again, as the
compass rose.
We dont have control over our people like that
As the world’s second-most populous nation, Chinas prosperity is fueled by its enormous
population, which provides an unparalleled reservoir of labor. The ceremony’s depiction of
manufacturing hinged on portraying people as instruments of production: the drummers were the
110
Cartwright, “The Seven Voyages of Zheng He.
109
Cartwright, “The Seven Voyages of Zheng He.
108
Mark Cartwright, “The Seven Voyages of Zheng He.
Worl d History Encyclopedia
, February 7, 2019.
107
This was a popular hoax in the late 19th century that involved an intelligent automaton (the “Turk”) that
could play chess. It was later revealed to be controlled by an expert chess player inside the machine. See:
“Enlightened Automata,ed. Clark et al.,
The Sciences
in Enlightened Europe
(The University of Chicago
Press,
1999) 126–165.
30
drumsticks, the dancers were the brushes, and the performers were the type blocks and oars of
imperial junks. How did they do it? NBC commentator Bob Costas asked, they did it with
people.
111
Beijing’s mass orchestration of performers
is what led some western viewers to
conclude that, more than a celebration, the ceremony was an assertion of Chinas strict
authoritarian control.
In an episode of the American show
30 Rock
, Wesley tells Liz Lemon, I
can’t suffer through the London Olympics. Were not prepared, Liz! Did you see the Beijing
Opening Ceremonies? We don’t have control over our people like that.
112
Although such interpretations missed the ceremony’s capitalist messaging, they correctly
recognized the ceremony’s proud demonstration of Chinas capacity to mobilize and manage its
large population. Moreover, the ceremony’s synchronized aesthetics also projected an image of
national unity. This messaging is rooted in its references to socialism; the CCP holds that
national unity relies on the preservation of its one-party system. As Slavoj Žižek notes, China
derides movements for workers rights and multiparty democracy as threats to the stability China
has enjoyed since the establishment of its current government in 1949.
113
He writes: The
conclusion is clear: in China, only Communist Party leadership can sustain rapid modernization
under conditions of social stability; the official (Confucian) term is that China should become a
harmonious society.
114
The next chapter will delve
into the stakes of Chinas professed
commitment to such a society. In such critiques, we cannot forget that the west is entangled in
the cruelties of Chinas state-controlled modernization. Chinas low wages are a response to
western demand; Apple, Foxconn’s biggest client, increases its profit margin by sourcing its parts
114
Žižek,
Three Notes on China: Past and Present
,”
719.
113
Žižek,
Three Notes on China: Past and Present
,”
719.
112
Tina Fey (show creator),
30 Rock.
Season 4, episode
21, “
Emmanuelle Goes to Dinosaur Land
,” aired
May 13 2010, in broadcast syndication,
NBC
.
111
Osgood,
What Everyone Got Wrong About the Last Beijing
Olympics Opening Ceremony
.”
31
as cheaply as possible. This raises the question: Who truly stands to benefit from Chinas
modernization?
32
CHAPTER TWO: A New Era’
Zhang Yimous Second Chance
Before Zhang Yimou won the bid to be the lead director of the 2008 Opening
Ceremony,
115
he had a mixed reputation within his home
country. In 1994, when Zhang released
his seminal work
To Live
, a film about a family struggling
to survive as the Communists came to
power, he was sanctioned by the government and forbidden to receive foreign funding for his
films for five years.
116
Chinese authorities also prevented
him from attending the Cannes Film
Festival, where
To Live
won multiple awards and was
a contender for Best Feature Film.
117
This
was the second time one of Zhang’s films was nominated for the Palme d’Or; four years earlier,
his film
Ju Dou
, a film about a woman sold to an abusive
business owner, had also received a
nomination
.
118
However, as Zhang rose to prominence
in the west, his films were regularly
censored and censured within China. Many citizens derided Zhang for reinforcing prejudiced
understandings of China and its people as culturally and morally backward.
119
Jennifer Hubbert
records an exchange she had in 2008 with one of her students in Kunming who claimed that
Zhang exaggerates [Chinas problems] on purposeHe exoticizes the problem and then it
seems that this is all there is of China. Foreign audiences are looking for this. Its what they
expect.
120
Many of Hubberts interviewees echo this
sentiment, believing that Zhang’s Opening
120
Hubbert, “Of Menace and Mimicry,419.
119
Hubbert, “Of Menace and Mimicry,419.
118
“Official Selection 1990: All the Selection,Festival de Cannes, 1990,
https://web.archive.org/web/20131214195202/http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/archives/1990/allSelections.html.
117
David Barboza, “Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s Close-Up.
116
Osgood,
What Everyone Got Wrong About the Last Beijing
Olympics Opening Ceremony
.”
115
While the exact role of Zhangs co-directors is not well-defined in public documents, and it is certain
that Zhang received a lot of help from them, I will be heretofore attributing all of the creative decisions to Zhang
since he was head director and, therefore, was ultimately responsible for every creative decision that was or was not
made, even if he himself did not come up with all of them.
33
Ceremony was a chance for him to redeem himself and the country he had profited from
pillorying.
Through carefully choreographed performances and historical symbolism, the 2008
Opening Ceremony depicted a China that was powerful and unified, rooted in a bastardized
definition of the Confucian ideal of harmony. In Confuciuss view, harmony did not entail
conformity: in
The Analects
, he proclaims
Junzi he
er butong”
(“
君⼦和⽽不同
”),
which
loosely translates to a gentleman”
121
is harmonious while maintaining difference. However, in
the Opening Ceremony, harmony” was portrayed through uniformity, emphasizing collective
order over individual distinction. The ceremony’s interpretation of Confucianism exemplified
Chinas use of the ideology as a cultural and ideological tool to reinforce social cohesion and
national identity.
122
Yet, the states vision of harmony stood in stark contrast to the political realities of 2008.
Just months before the Olympics, a major Tibetan uprising challenged the very narrative of unity
that the ceremony sought to affirm. Protests erupted across Tibet and were met with a swift and
forceful state crackdown. Internationally, the uprising intensified scrutiny of Chinas human
rights record; domestically, the uprising reinforced the governments commitment to controlling
Chinas national image.
Condemn it if you like
Far from a grassroots renegade, Zhang matured as an artist within state cultural
institutions. At 20, he worked as a cadre in Daxing County’s Mao Thought Propaganda Station
122
Schneider,
Staging China,
182.
121
What I translate as gentleman here could also be translated as “noble man for to be a gentleman, in
Confuciuss eyes, was to be the ideal man. This was the model he believed all should aspire to.
34
for five years.
123
He rose through the ranks of state-sponsored film and cultural organizations
before becoming Party Secretary of the Beijing Cultural Bureau.
124
The same year he directed the
Opening Ceremony, Zhang became head of the Beijing Peoples Art Theatre and joined the
country’s top political advisory body.
125
Indeed, there
has always been a cozy relationship
between China and its controversial new wave directors, the so-called Fifth Generation” to
which Zhang belongs. During the peak of the new wave movement, Chen Kaige, one of the most
prominent members of the Fifth Generation, was approached by PLA commanders who wanted
to increase the reach of their propaganda films. Zhang worked as a cinematographer for Chen’s
resulting 1986 film
The Big Parade
.
126
This collaboration
epitomized the intricate nexus between
avant-garde cinema and military public relations in China, demonstrating how state power and
artistic innovation converge to shape national narratives.
Zhang’s movies from the 1990s are the products of a brief period of artistic exploration
into the complex social issues he observed growing up.
To Live
may have been partially inspired
by Zhang’s difficult childhood (his family was a target of the Cultural Revolution due to his
fathers affiliation with the Kuomintang during the Chinese Civil War
127
). In any case,
To Live
was the last time he seriously challenged government censors, Zhang’s production manager
told
The New York Times
.
128
From the 2000s onwards,
Zhang’s films became decidedly less
critical of the government. Leading up to the Olympics, Zhang departed drastically from the style
he established with his revolutionary China-era films and directed three big-budget martial arts
films that broke Chinese box office records. In 2007, he defended his new international and
128
Barboza, “Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s Close-Up.
127
Amy Tikkanen,
Zhang Yimou
,”
Encyclopædia Britannica
,
May 19, 2010, last updated December 7,
2024.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zhang-Yimou
126
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
.”
125
Barboza, “Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s Close-Up”; Barmé.
124
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
.”
123
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
.”
35
modern” taste, telling
The
New York Times
that China has stepped into a new era, an era of
consumption and entertainment, adding, you can condemn it if you like, but it is a trend of
globalization.
129
In return for Zhang’s artistic contributions,
Beijing promoted his work, granting
prime opening dates, supporting his Oscar bids, and hand-picking him to direct the Olympic
ceremonies.
130
Regardless of if Zhang was fully trusted to lead the ceremonies, he did not have the
chance to go rogue: His co-directors were all card-carrying members of the PLA, with a deputy
minister of propaganda overseeing the first half of the Opening Ceremony.
131
This raises the
question: Why did the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee bother with Zhang at all? Susan
Brownell sees the move to choose Zhang as director of the Olympic ceremonies as one that
prioritize[d] international tastes over domestic.
132
Zhang’s banned movies are some of Chinas
most popular cinematic exports, and the preparations for the Olympics were primarily concerned
with impressing western audiences. Writer Zhang Lijia quotes a 67-year-old Olympic volunteer
who rejected the stereotypes historically projected onto China: I want foreigners to see what
China has achieved. We were called the sick man of Asia. Now we are strong and rich enough
to hold such a major international event.
133
The term
sick man of Asia historically denoted
Chinas perceived weakness a legacy that contemporary state narratives as well as Chinese
citizens have long sought to overcome. This desire shaped the Opening Ceremony’s presentation
of China.
Zhang was candid about his objective to rehabilitate Chinas image through the
ceremonies. He claims to have no interest in politics but in do[ing] something for the Chinese
133
Zhang Lijia, “Hand Grenades and the Olympics,in
China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance
, ed.
Merkel-Hess, et al., 168.
132
Brownell, “The Beijing Olympics as a Turning Point?”
131
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
.”
130
Barboza,
Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s Close-Up
.”
129
Barboza, “Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s Close-Up.
36
people.
134
Reflecting on his work in 2008, Zhang told
Xinhua
that he was far more proud of his
direction over the ceremonies than any of his movies:
From the very beginning, you know that behind you is the country and all the Chinese
people, which is a heavy responsibility. You are not solely representing yourself, so
success is not personal success. I don’t know how many peoples blood, sweat, and tears
were required to achieve the brilliant bloom that night, which makes it all the more
meaningful.
135
He explained that the directorial team was motivated by the slogan displayed in their
headquarters:
zuguode liyi gaoyu yiqie,
(“
祖国利益⾼于
⼀切
”),
or benefit the motherland
above all.
136
Benefit the Motherland
Zhang’s assignment was to tell a good China story, to put it in the words of Xi Jinping
at the 2013 National Conference on Thought and Propaganda.
137
The spectacle crafted by the
ceremony directors aimed to overcome crippling Orientalist stereotypes depicting opium
sickness, impoverished rural traditionalism, and countless little people with chopsticks and
pigtails through the volume of its drum rolls and the brilliant bloom of its fireworks. But the
ceremony embraced and reworked other Orientalist stereotypes. The ceremony’s mass spectacle
embodied Eberts trope of countless little people and reinforced the mathematical technical
137
“[We] must meticulously and properly conduct external propaganda, innovating external propaganda
methods, working hard to create new concepts, new categories and new expressions that integrate the Chinese and
the foreign, telling good China stories, communicating Chinas voice well.” Xi Jinping, National Conference on
Thought and Propaganda, 2013, translated by the
Chinese
Media Project
; “telling good China stories,” originally
Jiang hao zhongguo gushi
(
讲好中国故事
”)
is also translated
as “telling China’s stories well,though scholar
David Wang makes a case for understanding his meaning as “good China storiesin his book
Why Fiction Matters
in Contemporary China
.
136
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
.”
135
Beijing Opening Ceremony will be Historic, says
Chief Director Zhang Yimou
,”
Xinhua Net
, January
7, 2022.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/20220107/d968df5ffefd434c80d171abe6a2a430/c.html
; Ive tailored
the translation to better fit English grammar.
134
Barboza, “Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s Close-Up.
37
prowess often attributed to Asian people. Ultimately, the goal of the ceremony was not to
challenge western stereotypes of China but to benefit the Motherland.
Even portrayals of Chinas weakness can serve the state by rallying support to defend its
national image. The CCP actively reminds the public of Chinas erstwhile sick man” status,
memorializing the first day of Japanese occupation as National Humiliation Day”
138
and, as
Schell and Delury note, children are still exhorted to never forget national humiliation and
strengthen our national defense.
139
Since Chairman
Jiang Zemin’s tenure, Chinese media has
further entrench[ed] a popular impression of China as predominantly [a] victim and colonial
subject.
140
The CCP is effectively granted a blank
check any means for Chinas economic
recovery” are appropriate when one believes that the country is behind” the west in industrial
development due to its past impoverishment at the hands of foreign empires and enterprises.
Under this logic, even rapid, disruptive industrialization and urbanization become legitimized.
When framed within a narrative of victimhood, the Opening Ceremony becomes a project
of redemption, and Zhang Yimou a national hero. Zhang must have understood this when he
admitted that he felt the country and all the Chinese people were behind him. He was the
architect of a digestible culture and grand narrative that bolstered the CCPs modernization
policies. The ceremony’s central theme of harmony” refers to both the directives of Chairman
Hu Jintao to build a Harmonious Socialist Society” as well as the Confucian virtue. By invoking
Confucius, the CCP enshrined party loyalty in the revered words of Chinas greatest sage,
molding its historical narrative to affirm national identity and legitimize modern aspirations.
140
Barmé,
China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August
2008
”; Jiang Zemins term as president ended in
2003.
139
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
7.
138
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
7.
38
Hubberts students were excited about the cultural learning that would take place at the
Olympics, hopeful that the event would give westerners a chance to better understand Chinese
culture. As one student noted, China is different from other places. It has a very long history; it
definitely has the longest history of all the Olympic cities. When people get to Beijing, they will
see a mix of the modern and the traditional; this is China. A different student shared this
enthusiasm, saying their favorite parts of the Opening Ceremony were those that reflected
traditional Chinese culture, particularly the Confucian
Analects
section. For this student, the
ceremony’s depiction of Chinas 5,000-year history wasn’t about displaying how strong
China is but showing the world that Chinas culture and history are worth learning.
141
Another
student mentioned that he would have enjoyed Zhang’s films more if they had shown deeper
ideas about Confucianism and Daoism.
142
It was almost as though the filmmaker had taken note of the critiques from Hubberts
students; since the 2000s, Zhang’s films have celebrated traditional Chinese culture in
magnificent imperial settings, and his Opening Ceremony interwove the references to
Confucianism that he was once criticized for omitting. During the movable type act, performers
in the attire of ancient Confucian scholars recited excerpts from Confuciuss
The Analects
.
Confucius saw himself as a transmitter of tradition and stressed the study of classical texts as an
essential part of personal cultivation. The movable type act presented Confucianism itself as a
cultural inheritance and Confuciuss writings as part of the canon he encouraged his students to
study.
143
By portraying movable type as both a technological
achievement and a means of
preserving Confucian teachings, the ceremony underscored the value of both innovation and
143
Annping Chin,
Confucius
.”
Encyclopædia Britannica
,
July 20, 1998, last updated February 17, 2025.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Confucius
142
Its significant that this student took note of these two belief systems specifically while Confucianism
and Daoism are not the only influential religions in China, they are the only ones indigenous to China, whereas
Buddhism was introduced from India and Christianity was brought by western missionaries.
141
Hubbert, “Of Menace and Mimicry,423.
39
tradition, presenting them as complementary forces in a nation that is a mix of the modern and
the traditional.
In China, Confucianism holds historical as well as cultural importance. After becoming
the state ideology during the Han dynasty, Confucianism evolved through various neo-Confucian
schools and greatly influenced imperial Chinese politics.
144
Florian Schneider argues that the
Confucian value of harmony also became a transitive concept that applied across time, even as
it took different forms along the way.
145
Chinas long
history is a common source of national
pride, as reflected in Hubberts students fascination with the Opening Ceremony’s portrayal of
Chinas 5,000-year history. One will often hear claims that China has the longest continuous
history in the world, though the starting point of Chinas history is a matter of debate.
146
Still, this
5,000-year narrative is widely accepted, reinforcing the country’s traditionalist global image. As
John Ross argues in
You Don’t Know China,
archaeology
services politically conservative
147
agendas: When dealing with China whether trying to turn a profit or awaiting democratic
reforms the implication is you need to be more patient and just wait a little bit longer. After
all, the country has five thousand years of history.
148
Chinas history, regardless of its exact length, boasts a wealth of ancient treasures. Stories
of their rediscovery, whether fictionalized or documentary, are widely popular. Today, historian
148
John Grant Ross,
You Dont Know Chi na
, (Camphor Press,
2014).
https://www.camphorpress.com/5000-years-of-history/
147
I useconservative here and throughout this chapter to denote literal conservatism, which is to say,
fond of traditional values and averse to change.
146
There were Neolithic cultures producing pottery in what is now China at least 4,000 years ago. Oracle
bone inscriptions with the earliest form of Chinese characters go back 3,000 years. Not long after, bronzes were
found with the word for China,
zhong guo
(
中國
).
Others
argue that the start of China was its unification under the
Qin emperor in 221 BCE. See also: Charles O. Hucker et al., “History of China”
Encyclopædia Britannica
,
October
2, 1998, last updated February 26, 2025; C. Aylmer,
Chinese Oracle Bones
,” Cambridge Digital Library,
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-CUL-00001-00155/1
.
; Sima Qian,
Records of the Grand Historian: Qin
dynasty
, translated by Raymond Dawson, (Columbia University
Press, 2007).
https://books.google.com/books?id=ruicEVx96lwC
145
Schneider,
Staging China,
180.
144
Confucianism
,”
National Geographic,
August 8, 2024.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/confucianism/
40
Peter Harmsen claims that Chinese archaeology is experiencing a golden age.
149
Against this
backdrop, Zhang’s decision to begin the Opening Ceremony with the
fou
is especially notable.
Relics from ancient China serve as powerful symbols of the country’s cultural wealth. In the past
50 years, the Chinese government has rebuilt old towns or, more accurately, has constructed
loosely historical replicas of traditional villages outfitted with malls and souvenir shops to
attract tourists. One striking example is Hongya Cave in Chongqing, often called Chinas first
real cyberpunk city.
150
At night, Hongya Caves architectural facsimiles, lined with LED strips,
take on a sci-fi aesthetic reminiscent of the cyberpunk worlds envisioned in the 1980s, most
famously exemplified by the LA cityscape in Ridley Scotts
Blade Runner.
The Opening
Ceremony captured this neo-retro Sino aesthetic with drummers in futuristic Y3K silver robes
playing ancient bronze instruments.
151
Just as the rafters
of old stilt houses glow with tape lights
in Hongya Cave, the
fou
drums were illuminated against
the dark stadium by their embedded
LED bulbs.
151
“Y3K” is Chinese internet terminology which denotes a fashion trend that has gained traction thanks to
East Asian girl groups. It is characterized by its use of sleek silver attire and holographic jewelry.
150
Asa Roast, “Three Theses on the Sinofuturist City,in “Sinofuturism(s),ed. Virginia L. Conn and
Gabriele de Seta.
Verg e: S tu di es i n G lo ba l As ia s
7,
no. 2 (Fall 2021): 81.
149
Peter Harmsen, “
The Indiana Jones Syndrome and the golden age of Chinese archaeology
,”
University
of Oxford School of Archaeology
, August 20, 2021.
https://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/article/indiana-jones-syndrome-and-golden-age-chinese-archaeology
41
Figure 8: Hongya Cave, Chongqing. Hongya Cave at night from Qiansimen Bridge,
uploaded August 18, 2023, Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:202308_Hongya_Cave_at_night_from_Qiansimen_Bri
dge.jpg
The ceremony presented a colorful visual representation of the mix of the modern and
the traditional that make China, where ancient technologies are buttressed by newer ones or
where giant manually-moved type is illuminated by an even larger, computer-animated screen.
The Opening Ceremony framed technological advancements not as a rupture with tradition but
as its natural continuation. This hybridization of modernity and history suggests that China has
always been at the cutting edge while remaining deeply rooted in tradition.
42
Figure 9: The Opening Ceremony’s typeset was framed by a large computer-animated
screen. Olympics.
Confronting Confucius
But China did not always embrace the cultural heritage the ceremony showcased. The
ceremony’s integration of symbols of Confucianism, nationalism, and modernization would have
been inconceivable just 30 years earlier. For the better part of the past century, political leaders
viewed Confucian traditionalism as an obstacle to national progress and development. As the
Qing dynasty unraveled, Chinese political reformers like Liang Qichao struggled to reconcile
Confucianism with the demands of modernization, viewing them as opposing forces.
152
It was
also Liang who coined the term sick man of Asia, or in Chinese,
dongfang bingfu
(
东⽅病夫
),
to describe Chinas political condition in the early 20th century.
153
This phrase came to define
early modern China, marking a period known as the century of humiliation” that spanned from
the First Opium War to the end of World War II. The drive to heal the sick man” and resist
western imperial rivals spurred Chinese reform throughout the 20th century. Influenced by
153
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
95.
152
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
101.
43
western theories of social Darwinism, Liang argued that Chinas weakness stemmed from its lack
of national consciousness and the inability of Chinese citizens to see themselves as citizens
of a unified nation.
154
Liang saw provisional authoritarian rule as essential for making citizens out of the
common people.
155
Liang believed that the people needed
to be instilled with nationalism, the
new, fashionable ideology for developing countries in the 19th century. He lamented that even
those who had immigrated to America remained so trapped in their attachments to clan, village,
native region, and ancient culture that they were unable to identify with the commonweal and
behave as citizens of a larger, modern nation must.
156
This notion was later echoed by Sun Yat-Sen, nicknamed the Father of the Nation.
157
Sun was initially a staunch advocate for establishing a western-style democracy, and he
attempted, often unsuccessfully, to spark democratic revolutions while in exile.
158
Growing
disillusioned, Sun introduced the concept of an authoritarian political tutelage stage
positioned as a precursor to the final stage of democracy in his 1918 treatise Three Stages of
Revolution.
159
For Sun, instilling nationalist ideals
in the people took precedence over his
aspirations for democracy. Schell and Delury claim that Chinas current system of authoritarian
capitalism directly draws from Sun’s notion of political tutelage.
160
Like Sun and Liang, Chen Duxiu, the founder of the CCP, also pinpointed insufficient
nationalism as the source of Chinas political weakness and blamed Confucian traditionalism,
160
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
140.
159
Theodore de Bary, Richard John Lufrano, Wing-tsit Chan, and John Berthrong,
Sources of Chinese
Tradition, Volume II: From 1600 through the Twentieth Century
(Columbia University Press, 2000), 328-330.
158
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
119.
157
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
119.
156
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
106.
155
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
106.
154
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
98; Schell and
Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
101.
44
writing that Chinese people care about their family and do not care about their nation.
161
Chen
was part of the May Fourth movement of 1919, a radical intellectual movement that rejected
traditional Chinese values.
162
As historian Zhou Cezong
notes, May Fourth youth were
clamoring against family, against religion, against old morals and old habits, and to break all old
systems in their desire to break free from oppressive systems. The movement decried tradition
with great fervor, Zhou recalls: I met someone in front of Beida Hospital. I asked her, Whats
your last name? She glared for a while and shouted, I don’t have a surname!
163
For May
Fourth intellectuals, adherence to tradition was to blame for Chinas humiliation in the Opium
Wars, the domination of foreign spheres of influence, government corruption, and social malaise.
Instead, they placed their faith in the promises of Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy, hoping
these ideals would modernize China and defend it from western imperialism.
164
The CCP,
drawing from this ideological framework, pledged to destroy the old China, build a new one, and
provide a strong leader to guide the nation on the long march to prosperity.
Mao’s greatest success lay in his ability to dismantle the old order. Hailing from a peasant
background and declaring himself anti-Confucian from an early age, Mao was a lifelong
iconoclast.
165
Under his rule, countless temples, cultural
relics, and historical artifacts
Confucian or otherwise were destroyed, and those associated with traditional knowledge were
targeted in his campaign against the Four Olds (old thinking, old culture, old customs, and old
habits).
166
No institution or tradition escaped his
sweeping assault. Criticize Confucius became
166
Barbara Mittler, “‘
Enjoying the Four Olds! Oral
Histories from a “Cultural Desert
,”
The Journal of
Transcultural Studies
4, no. 1 (2013): 177.
https://doi.org/10.11588/ts.2013.1.10798
165
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
201.
164
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China.
163
Zhou Cezong,
History of the May 4th Movement
(Beijing
University Press, 1955). Translation is my
own.
162
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
150.
161
Lee Feigon,
Chen Duxiu, Founder of the Chinese Communist Party
(Princeton University Press, 1983),
66.
45
shorthand for denouncing moderates.
167
However, by the end of Mao’s tenure, he failed to sustain
the growth his rule had ignited, and China had not reached the level of strength its leaders had
anticipated.
After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping once condemned by Mao as a capitalist roader
168
restored public confidence in the government, appealing to a population exhausted by
constant revolution and persistent poverty with his proclamation to let some people get rich
first.”
169
Under Deng, the CCP began to reexamine and
rehabilitate Chinas cultural heritage.
Once dismissed by revolutionary fervor, Confucianism reemerged as a pillar of patriotism, with
the state actively promoting Chinas ancient history as a cornerstone and conduit for modern
achievement. This cultural revival reached a new height during the 2008 Olympics. The Opening
Ceremony did not only celebrate Chinas historical legacy: it also streamlined a tumultuous past
marked by wars, civil strife, and cycles of fragmentation and reunification. By invoking
Confucian ideals, the ceremony glossed over Chinas periods of chaos and created a seamless
narrative of stability.
Leading up to 2008, a national studies fever swept across the country, renewing focus
on Chinese cultural inheritance and Confucianism within academia.
170
As China entered an era of
unprecedented economic prosperity, observers noted similarities with the East Asian Little
Dragons South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan which shared Chinas social
conservatism and Confucian influences. All had attained wealth and power without adopting
democracy, reinforcing the viability of the CCPs model.
170
Delury; Sheila Melvin,
Modern Gloss on China’s Golden
Age
,”
New York Times
. September 3, 2007.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/arts/03stud.html
169
Zhang Xiaodan, “Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China,ed. Deborah S. Davis and Wang
Feng (Stanford University Press, 2009): xiv.
168
Westad and Chen,
The Great Transformation,
109.
167
Westad and Chen,
The Great Transformation,
119.
46
However, Chinas turn toward traditionalism initially faced resistance. Throughout the
1970s and 80s, censorship was less restrictive, and the public made critiques of the government
during the 1978 Democracy Wall Movement, marking the onset of the so-called Beijing
Spring.
171
Delury contends that after the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, the state
leveraged Confucianism to reinforce patriarchal governance and legitimize conservative
policies.
172
Deng sought to distinguish economic liberalization
from social liberalization, fearing
the latter could destabilize Chinas newfound prosperity.
173
Chinas economic system was not
capitalism, Deng claimed, but socialism with Chinese characteristics, using Chinese cultural
exceptionalism to justify his opposition to western democracy.
174
After 1989, Confucian studies
institutions proliferated, and by the 1990s, the CCP invoked Confucian ideals to define the
substance of Chinese characteristics.
175
Only four
months after the Tiananmen massacre, Deng
gave a speech at a government-sponsored celebration of Confuciuss birthday in which he
championed the sages ideal of harmony.
176
Later,
in 2002, Chairman Jiang Zemin gave his
final address to the National Peoples Congress, declaring that China had become a society of
moderate prosperity, borrowing from the language of Confuciuss
Classic of Rites
. Delury
claims this declaration was a conveyance of the increasing heterogeneity of the sources of CCP
ideology, which had by then embraced state-controlled capitalism, papering over the country’s
newly adopted economic policy with ancient aphorisms.
177
Six years later, the Opening
177
Delury has an interesting reading of this term, “moderate prosperity(
xiaokang shehui
⼩康社会
).
He
claims that Jiangs usage of the term “actually undermined the Confucian ideal even as the CCP seemed to be
moving in a neo-Confucian direction (by using a classical buzzword)since it had been originally used to describe
“the unjust, imperfect world Confucius saw around him” which he compared to “the utopian vision of great unity
(
datong
⼤同
),
in which rulers and ruled worked together
to achieve a shared concept of the common good.” This
vision of “great unity” had adherents from all fronts of Chinese reformism, including in Sino-Marxism. Thus,
176
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China.
175
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China.
174
Hagström, “Harmony and the Quest for Soft Power,510.
173
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China”; Westad and Chen,
The Great Transformation,
303.
172
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China”; Westad and Chen,
The Great Transformation,
303.
171
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China”; David C. Turnley, Peter Liu, Peter Turnley, and Melinda Liu,
Beijing
Spring
(Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1989): 19.
47
Ceremony syncretized symbols from ancient, imperial, and modern China to present a vision of
modernity with Chinese characteristics a version of development that is Chinas own,
circumventing accusations of westernization.
While nationalist politicians initially dismissed Confucianism as antithetical to their
goals, they later retooled it to reinforce state power. Though Confucianism had once seemed at
odds with industrial progress, the state realized the ideology’s utility in filibustering social
reform. Moreover, to borrow sociologist Anthony Smith’s terminology, the CCP employs
Confucianism as a tool of
ethnosymbolism
, using shared
cultural symbols, myths, and traditions
to forge a collective national identity.
178
Pro-democracy
dissident Liu Xiaobo once remarked that
the Confucianism promoted by the state gained acceptance because the Chinese search for a
spiritual crutch in the ancient culture that once made them proud.
179
Confucianism or at least
its curated representation became crucial in shaping national identity after Mao’s cultural
rupture.
Though the 2008 Opening Ceremony omitted Maoism, its exclusion was unsurprising
how could a project of cultural formation reference a historical period defined by cultural
destruction? By erasing ruptures, Zhang constructed a narrative of an unbroken 5,000-year
civilization. In doing so, he aimed to restore both his reputation and that of his people a
people encouraged to champion Chinas cultural distinctions from its neighbors and competitors,
even if such distinctions were, at least in part, manufactured.
179
Geremie Barand Linda Jaivin,
New Ghosts, Old Dreams:
Chinese Rebel Voices
, (Times Books,
1992): 385.
178
Anthony D. Smith,
Nationalism and Modernism
(Routledge,
1998): 170.
concludes Delury, this was an affirmation of the neoliberal capitalist measures put forward by Dengs reforms,
telegraphing that “the CCP was no longer the party of utopiangreat unity à la the Great Leap Forward and Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It would pursue the more modest goal of moderate prosperity, and people were free
to pursue their self-interests.” Delury, “Harmonious’ in China.”
48
One World, One Dream
By the time Hu Jintao took office, the failures of his predecessors vision for a society of
moderate prosperity” were apparent. With Chinas unchecked economic growth, the national
wealth disparity increased, as did the number of reported local protests. Until the government
stopped releasing annual statistics in 2006, there were up to tens of thousands of such protests
reported every year.
180
Experts estimate that by the
end of Hu’s term in 2013, the number of
protests was close to 200,000.
181
As Delury notes, Party
documents dealing with harmony
openly acknowledge the discord caused by increasing disparities between rich and poor and city
and countryside.
182
In 2004, as a direct response to
popular demonstrations, Hu implemented
policies meant to create a harmonious society” and a harmonious world, asserting that
harmony carries the most meaning for Chinese culture.
183
Harmony” was both shorthand for
Chinese cultural and philosophical tradition and an essential component to the CCPs project of
modernization and national rebranding.
184
Integrating Confucianism into Hu’s agenda, however, required maneuvering. Liu Xiaobo
saw Hu’s Confucianism as a sales pitch that combines tall tales about the ancients with insights
that are about as sophisticated as the lyrics of pop songs.
185
Delury analyzes a segment of Hu’s
speech announcing his doctrine, in which Hu misattributed the maxim harmony is prized above
all to Confucius; this quote came from one of the sages disciples, who maintained that harmony
185
Barand Jaivin,
New Ghosts, Old Dreams,
385.
184
Zeng Xiangming, “Interpreting the Soft Power of the Chinese Dream,“‘
Zhongguomeng’ De
Ruanshili Jiedu,
(
解读
中国梦
的软实⼒
”),
Fujian Theory Studies
8 (2014): 4–6;
Tao Shaoxing Deconstructing
‘China Threat Theory’: The Pursuit of Harmonious World in the Chinese Dream,”
Journal of Nanchang Hangkong
University: Social Sciences
17, no. 1 (2015): 19.
183
Hu Jintao, “Build towards a Harmonious World of Lasting Peace and Common Prosperity,
Guanyu
Goujian Shehuizhuyi Hexie Shehui Jianghua Quanwen
(“
关于构建社会主义和谐社会的讲话(全⽂
)”),
Chinanet
, 2005; Josh Chin, “The Most ‘Chinese’ Chinese
Character?” Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2010.
182
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China.
181
Thomas Orlik, “Unrest Grows as Economy Booms,
Wall
Street Journal
, September 26, 2011.
180
William Freeman, The Accuracy of Chinas Mass Incidents,
Financial Times
, March 2, 2010.
49
must be balanced with a sense of ritual propriety.
186
In the same speech, Delury notes that Hu
cherry-picked quotes from various ancient texts, including one from the
Classic of Rites
all
men are brothers within the four seaswhich, according to Delury, strips Confucianism of its
core familial and particularist ethics.
187
Notably,
performers at the 2008 Opening Ceremony also
recited this quote. Delury says that, in deploying ancient thinkers and texts to bolster his political
agenda, Hu ignored the subtlety and tension in classical arguments over the terms significance,
presenting instead a generic picture of sages ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, all
agreeing that everyone should get along with one another.
188
While Confucian thought has
historically embraced syncretism, Hu ultimately failed to articulate a coherent model for his ideal
society. Instead of formulating a new, nuanced ideology, he reduced harmony to a tool for
encouraging assimilation and political obsequiousness a stark contrast to Confuciuss original
vision of the virtue.
Hu’s Harmonious Society” doctrine encompassed a series of reforms and policies aimed
at sustaining the state-controlled, market-driven growth introduced by Deng with an emphasis on
developing rural areas to narrow the wealth gap.
189
It also instituted policies that responded to
social unrest in China, which surged at its border with Tibet.
190
In 2005, Hu’s administration
drafted laws tightening control on speech about the government, limiting the activities of NGOs,
and censoring internet discourse.
191
The same year,
the slogan for the upcoming Olympics was
191
Fan, “
China’s Party Leadership Declares New Priority
.”
190
Fan, “
China’s Party Leadership Declares New Priority
”;
Roger Barnett
Thunder from Tibet,
New York
Review of Books
, May 1, 2008.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/05/29/thunder-from-tibet/
189
Maureen Fan,
China’s Party Leadership Declares New
Priority: 'Harmonious Society
,’”
The
Wash ington Post
. October 12, 2006.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/10/12/chinas-party-leadership-declares-new-priority-harmon
ious-society-span-classbankheaddoctrine-proposed-by-president-hu-formally-endorsedspan/0dea45bb-b120-4ab7-8b
34-e867d308ae4b/
188
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China.
187
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China.
186
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China.
50
unveiled: One World, One Dream, a seemingly benign platitude that gestured at Hu’s attempt
to harmonize his increasingly fractured country.
192
Hagström theorizes that harmony” played
a crucial role in enhancing Chinas appeal to international visitors during the Olympics.
193
Claims
to harmony are, Hagström says, made in attempts to attract domestic and international
audiences, and by portraying itself as harmonious, Chinese leaders thus seek to convey Chinas
overall benignity to the world and to attract domestic and international audiences.
194
This view
assumes that the ceremony’s goal was to communicate harmony, but the ceremony did not
merely signal unity it also generated a shared affective experience. In this sense, the ceremony
was not just a representation of harmony” but a performance that sought to produce it as lived
reality.
194
Hagström, “Harmony and the Quest for Soft Power,508.
193
Schneider examines several instances in the ceremony that, in his view, illustrate Chinas appeals to
harmony as “discursive statements about how humanity should strive for world peace.” As part of Chinas
demonstration of its commitment to peace, the ceremony featured symbolic elements such as “white doves, foreign
performers alongside Chinese actors, images of foreign children,” and a large inflatable globe in the final segment.
Atop this globe stood singers Sarah Brightman, an English performer, and Liu Huan, a Chinese singer, holding
hands as they performed “You and Me in both Mandarin and English:
“Come together, put your hand in mine.
You
and me, from one world, we are family.” “
来吧!朋友,伸出你的⼿,我和你,⼼连⼼,永
⼀家⼈
.”
Schneider,
182-185.
192
IOC, “
Beijing 2008: One World, One Dream
,” June 27, 2005.
https://olympics.com/ioc/news/beijing-2008-one-world-one-dream
51
Figure 10: The juxtaposition of the
he
(
)
characters
earlier form with its modern script.
Olympics.
Figure 11: The Confucian disciples. Olympics.
52
We may see the visual performance of the states reimagined Confucianism through cues
in the movable type act. It began with Confucian disciples in black-and-white robes, reminiscent
of anthropomorphized ink brushes like the dancers in the preceding paper act. Like the
drummers, the disciples chanted and moved in synchronization, using bound bamboo rods as
their percussive instruments. Unlike the drummers, however, the disciples movements were
restricted by their gowns and rods. They spun, marched, and bowed to the large screen at the
center of the floor, where a movable typeset had risen in place of the giant paper scroll. The
typeset moved in mesmerizing waves, foreshadowing the seafaring Zheng He compass act. From
the typeset emerged the first formation of the character for harmony, almost unrecognizable in its
ancient script.
The disciples continued their chant, arms raised toward the typeset as if addressing a
master with their prayer-like proclamations. Ripples emerged from within the press, expanding
outward from a single point. The circular ripples gradually transformed into concentric
rectangles, forming convex and concave pyramids perhaps in an allusion to the ancient
pyramids, another monumental feat of engineering, precision, and intense labor. The interplay of
circles and rectangles is similarly symbolic: In ancient China, the square represents earth, and the
circle represents Heaven. These two forms are united by the movement of the type blocks,
harmonized by the humans that power them.
195
As the performance continued, a second early Chinese character for harmony appeared,
followed by its most modern version. The Opening Ceremony’s presentation of the characters
195
Humans are also often seen as the link between heaven and earth: “For at bottom Heaven, Earth, the
myriad things and man form one body. The point at which this unity is manifested in its most refined and excellent
form is the clear intelligence of the human mind.” Wang Yangming,
Instructions for Practical Living
and Other
Neo-Confucian Writings
, trans. by Wing-tsit Chan (Columbia
University Press, 1963), 221-222.
https://archive.org/details/instructionsforp00wang/page/n7/mode/2up
53
linguistic development aligns with how the ceremony presented history itself: mythic yet true,
shape-shifting yet orderly. Harmony, too, would seem to have a 5,000-year history. The lights cut
out before an angular, raised gash grew out of the press, invoking the Great Wall Chinas own
Pyramids of Giza. Bright pink plum blossoms emerged from the blocks of type, swaying before
the performers themselves appeared. While the audience enjoyed a flawlessly coordinated
performance, each dancer was only aware of the precise moment to lift their small box, unable to
see the pictures they created. As the performers smiled and waved to the crowd, their drenched
faces and fatigued expressions divulged months of grueling practice and tireless work to
harmonize movement from those dark, confined cells.
If Zhang’s movies from the 1990s made him well-known, the 2008 Opening Ceremony
made him a true star. After the Games were over, Zhang won a Peabody Award for creating a
spell-binding, unforgettable celebration of the Olympic promise, featuring a cast of
thousands.
196
He was a runner-up for
Time
s Person
of the Year. Steven Spielberg, who once
considered joining the team of creative directors for the Beijing Olympic ceremonies, described
Zhang’s work in
Time
: This year he captured this
prevalent theme of harmony and peace, which
is the spirit of the Olympic Games, building on what Spielberg called the desire for inner
peace that he believed permeated Zhang’s oeuvre.
197
Harmony, it turned out, was a fantastic
selling point.
197
Person Of The Year 2008
,”
Time
, December 17, 2008.
https://web.archive.org/web/20081219174746/http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/personoftheyear/article/0,31
682,1861543_1865103_1865107,00.html
196
68th Annual Peabody Awards
, May 2009.
http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/beijing-olympics-opening-ceremony-and-zhang-yimou
54
Being Harmonized
Just as there are material benefits to harmonious
nationalism, there are also material
costs. Less than five months before the Olympics, Chinese officials were dealing with civil
unrest on the western border. March 10, 2008, marked the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan
uprising which led to the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama, who released a statement commemorating
the event:
China is emerging as a powerful country due to her great economic progress. This is to be
welcomed butthe world is eagerly waiting to see how the present Chinese leadership
will put into effect its avowed concepts of harmonious society’ and peaceful rise. For
the realization of these concepts, economic progress alone will not suffice
198
That day, hundreds of Tibetan monks marched from Drepung Monastery to Lhasa in peaceful
protest against the PLAs targeted imprisonment of Tibetan dissidents and restrictions on their
cultural and religious practices.
199
Chinese security
responded with force.
200
The 2008 uprising would become one of the bloodiest in recent Chinese history,
escalating into a days-long conflict with civilian protestors in Lhasa targeting Han and Hui
(Muslim) Chinese business owners.
201
The protestors
hoped staging a conflict so close to the
Olympics would draw international attention, and they were right.
202
The uprising fueled western
fears about the consequences of authoritarian rule in China. International organizations,
including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, called for the boycott of the Opening
202
Lopez, “How to Think About Tibet,42.
201
Merkel-Hess, et al.,
China in 2008,
39.
200
Lopez, “How to Think About Tibet,42.
199
Donald S. Lopez, “How to Think About Tibetin
China
in 2008: A Year of Great Significance,
ed.
Merkel-Hess, Kate, et al., 42; it is also important to note that there were significant demonstrations prior to March
10, though this day holds particular international significance.
198
Barnett,
Thunder from Tibet
;
Lhasa under Siege
,”
The Economist
, March 17, 2008.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2008/03/17/lhasa-under-siege
55
Ceremony.
203
Meanwhile, Chinese citizens were outraged by videos of attacks against Chinese
settlers in Tibet that circulated online.
204
Chinas vision of one world” came at the cost of Tibetan sovereignty and, on another
level, the recognition of ethnic differences. Controversy erupted when the organizers of the
Games confirmed allegations that the Olympic flag-raising troupe of 56 children one for
every recognized Chinese ethnic minority, each dressed in the corresponding traditional attire
were all, in fact, Han Chinese.
205
Wang Wei, the vice
president of the Games, defended the
decision, explaining that it is typical for Chinese performers to wear different apparel from
different ethnic groups, to symbolize how they are friendly and happy together.
206
The
inclusion of colorful garments is supposedly sufficient for minority representation because the
state fails to publicly recognize cultural differences between Chinas ethnic minorities and the
Han majority. Symbolically, Han identity is made universal. Indeed, Han has always been a fluid
category, evolving with the growth of the Chinese state and cannibalizing other ethnicities in the
process.
207
Characterizing assimilation as harmony”
allows the state to paint dissidents,
including Tibetan protesters, as enemies of harmony and progress. While international support
for Tibet surged in 2008, Chinese nationalism was only reaffirmed by the uprising domestically.
In his essay At War with the Utopia of Modernity, Pankaj Mishra explains that a largely Han
nation sympathized with the Han Chinese who had been attacked by Tibetan mobs.
208
208
Merkel-Hess, Kate, et al.,
China in 2008,
39.
207
For example, the Minyue people were gradually subsumed into the Han majority during the process of
cultural and political integration in the early imperial periods, particularly under the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220
CE). However, its worth noting that “ethnicity,similarly to “race,is generally a slippery category that defies rigid
delineation as it is constantly socially constructed. See: Yang Kuan (
杨宽
),
Zhanguo shi
(
战国史
) (
Shanghai
People's Press, July 2016).
206
Goldsmith,
Ethnic children faked at Games opening
.”
205
Belinda Goldsmith,
Ethnic children faked at Games
opening
,”
Reuters,
August 15, 2008.
204
Merkel-Hess, et al.,
China in 2008,
39.
203
Allison Welch,
Human Rights in China: 2008 Beijing
Summer Olympics
,”
Human Rights & Human
Welfare
9, no. 1 (2009): 210.
56
Figure 12: The parade of Chinas recognized ethnic minorities. Olympics.
The 2008 Games have thus been described as a mass distraction from the Tibetan
Uprising. Florian Schneider argues that the Games were a modern-day version of the infamous
Roman imperial practice of providing the subjugated masses with bread and games.
209
Academic Haiyan Lee agrees, adding that it is better to party en masse than to flex massive
military muscles.
210
However, the ceremony did not
simply serve as a distraction it also
provided the perfect platform to reinforce and project a Han Chinese-centric state narrative.
Beyond the half-hearted attempt at minority representation during the flag-raising, the Opening
Ceremony made few references to Chinas diverse influences. The ceremony’s historical
narrative illustrated the development of imperial China without reference to the two major
dynasties led by non-Han ethnic minorities
211
and offered
few symbols of Tibetan culture. There
were no obvious Buddhist symbols, despite Buddhisms significant influence on Chinese culture.
211
That is, the Yuan and the Qing.
210
Haiyan Lee, “Its Right to Party, En Masse,in
China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance,
ed.
Merkel-Hess, et al., 176.
209
Schneider,
Staging China,
23.
57
Figure 13: Four activists from Students for a Free Tibet unfurled a banner spelling out Free
Tibet in Beijing’s Olympic Park. The activists were eventually detained by security personnel.
Wikimedia; Associated Press,
China Detains Activists
after Unfurling Free Tibet Banner
,”
Fox News, January 14, 2015.
Figure 14: Google Ngram result for Free Tibet displays a peak in mentions in 2008 and a sharp
decline after 2009.
After the wave of Tibetan protests subsided and the Games were over, news cycles
shifted focus, and the issue of Tibetan independence faded from international attention.
212
However, preparation for the Games included the installation of surveillance cameras and
monitoring devices in Tibet and Beijing which remained in place even after the Games, creating
212
In hindsight, Chinese media has been remarkably successful in silencing claims for Tibetan recognition.
There is little coverage of the Tibetan protests that occurred outside the Birds Nest Olympic stadium during the
Games or the “Tibetan Olympicsthat activist Lobsang Wangyal staged in Dharamshala in May of 2008. See:
One
World Many Dreams, Tibetan Olympics to begin from May 22
.”
gangkyi.com
. May 16, 2008.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110711072052/http://gangkyi.com/news_detail.php?id=493
58
a lasting mechanism of control, as described by Chinas minister of public security.
213
Western
protests over Chinas treatment of Tibetan protestors only fueled Han ethnonationalism as
Chinese nationals grew increasingly indignant about the confrontations they faced during the
torch relay.
214
Hagström argues that Confucian soft power fosters a self/other dichotomization”
that strengthens Chinese nationalism by positioning it in opposition to the non-Confucian west.
215
Western sympathy for Tibet reinforced a self/other dichotomization” not only between Chinese
people and westerners but also between Han Chinese and Tibetans, only compounded by the
anger many Chinese civilians felt over the violence Tibetan protesters inflicted upon individual
Chinese settlers.
Of course, unrest in Tibet did not begin or end in 2008. China has long had territorial
conflicts with Tibet, which is rich in precious minerals. Tensions escalated significantly in 2006
when the Chinese government built a railroad bringing thousands of Chinese settlers into
Lhasa.
216
This new railroad expedited industrial development
in Tibet but also displaced its
people, quickly drawing accusations of settler colonialism.
217
While defenders of the CCP point
to the economic benefits Tibet has received from Chinese intervention, critics argue that Tibets
development is precisely what has fueled discontent in the region.
218
Mishra writes that Deng
218
“Beijing hopes that the new rail link to Lhasa, which makes possible the cheap extraction of Tibets
uranium and copper, will bring about
kuayueshi fazhan
[
跨越式发展
] (‘
leapfrog development’
)...
Tibet has been
enlisted into what is the biggest and swiftest modernization in history: China’s development on the model of
consumer capitalism.Mishra, “At War with the Utopia of Modernity,40.
217
Mishra, “At War with the Utopia of Modernity,40.
216
Mishra, “At War with the Utopia of Modernity,40.
215
Hagström, “Harmony and the Quest for Soft Power,518.
214
“During the initial torch lighting ceremony in Athens, two members of Reporters Without Borders
rushed the stadium field, waving black flags. For the torch, this marked the beginning of a tumultuous journey. In
San Francisco, London, and Paris, police officers created a ‘human shield’ around the torch to protect it from
thousands of protesters. Despite this, the torch was momentarily extinguished by protesters in both London and
Paris. The planned route through Pakistan was altered due to fear of militant interference. Protests surrounding the
torchs journey were also reported in Kazakhstan, Turkey, Argentina, India, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and
Vietnam. Welch, Human Rights in China, 212-213.
213
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
376; Joseph Fewsmith, “‘Social management’ as a Way of Coping
with Heightened Social Tensions,
China Leadership
Monitor
, no.36 (January 26, 2012), 6.
59
Xiaoping’s post-Tiananmen gamble that people intoxicated with prosperity will not demand
political change failed in Tibet. He attributes this failure to the rural living conditions in
much of Tibet: Tibetans were not accustomed to, nor did they generally support, urbanization.
Andrew Martin Fischer argues that the CCPs development of Tibet has come at the expense of
Tibetan empowerment, noting that the region’s uneven growth primarily benefits Han Chinese
developers.
219
Historian Ravni Thakur states the socioeconomic
divide between Han developers
and indigenous Tibetans is corroborated by any visit to Tibet where it is noticeable how the Han
dominate all urban sectors.
220
However, urbanization and industrialization were highly successful in promoting
nationalism in Chinas Han-dominant regions. Scholar Annisa Lee traces modern Han Chinese
nationalism to Deng’s 1978 economic reforms. Chinese ethnic nationalism and pride, she
writes, was buoyed by the New Chinas rapid economic democratic growth, military
modernization, cultural and educational development and forming of new collectivism and
unity.
221
In contrast, widespread skepticism about
modernization in Tibet, as Mishra argues, led
to the failure of the belief in the utopia of modernity a consumer lifestyle in urban centers
promised by China.
222
Fischer notes that many Tibetans
rejected the states forced Sinization,
even though it brought financial benefits, improved education, and increased white-collar work
opportunities.
223
Many Tibetans were unconvinced that
a higher GDP would lead to the general
improvement of life. As Fischer notes, Chinas economic integration of Tibet entailed increased
223
Fischer,
The Disempowered Development of Tibet in
China,
251.
222
Mishra, “At War with the Utopia of Modernity,41.
221
Annisa Lai Lee, “Did the Olympics Help the Nation Branding of China? Comparing Public Perception
of China with the Olympics before and after the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Hong Kong,”
Place Branding and
Public
Diplomacy
6, no. 3 (2010): 209.
220
Ravni Thakur, “The Marginalization of Tibetans in Tibet: Rethinking the Development Story.
Development and Change
47, no.1 (2016): 203–17.
https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12214
.
219
Fischer,
The Disempowered Development of Tibet in
China,
11.
60
marginalization, which strengthened political resistance.
224
The 2008 Tibetan uprising can thus
be understood as an anti-capitalist struggle as well as an ethnic conflict.
Mishra provocatively contends that Tibetans are not much more politically important
than the hundreds of hapless Chinese uprooted by Chinas Faustian pact with consumer
capitalism.
225
Indeed, many Han Chinese citizens are also affected by the states prioritization of
industry and infrastructure. In 2008, the BOCOG admitted that at least 15,000 Beijing residents
were displaced in the construction of the Olympic infrastructure. However, the Forced Migration
Review estimates the number to be as high as 1.25 million, making 2008 one of the most
devastating Games in terms of housing displacement.
226
Mishra points out that similar conflicts exist in democratic nations as well, drawing
comparisons with struggles in his home country of India. He writes that farmers and tribal
members in West Bengal and Odisha confront a murderous axis of politicians, businessmen, and
militias determined to corral their ancestral lands into a global network of profit.
227
A similar
comparison can be made with the historic and ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples in the
Americas. Again, Hu’s emphasis on harmony did not emerge from protests for democracy or
ethnic recognition but as a response to discord caused by increasing disparities between rich and
poor and city and countryside.
228
Scholars have noted
similar patterns in Xinjiang: ethnographer
Thomas Cliff refers to the political situation in Xinjiang as lucrative chaos, where Uyghur land
228
Delury, “‘Harmonious in China.
227
Mishra, “At War with the Utopia of Modernity,41.
226
Nick Mulvenney,
Beijing says 15,000 relocated for
Games venues
,”
Reuters
. February 19, 2008.
225
Mishra, “At War with the Utopia of Modernity,41.
224
Fischer,
The Disempowered Development of Tibet in
China,
11.
61
dispossession and debt growth result from the collaboration between Chinese government
officials and entrepreneurs.
229
In this context, one might view conventional coverage of the 2008 Tibetan uprising as a
distraction in its own right. By framing the conflict as primarily ethnic, the media obscured the
shared experiences of exploitation and dispossession faced by both Tibetans and Han Chinese,
undermining potential cross-ethnic solidarity. Schell and Delury claim that the biggest new
battlefield in Hu Jintao’s campaign to impose harmony on an increasingly outspoken and
freewheeling society was online.
230
Hu’s Great Firewall
censored websites and posts that did
not align with party ideology. Chinese netizens who found themselves on the wrong side of the
firewall coined the term
bei hexie
(
被和谐
),
being harmonized,
to describe the states virtual
231
Enforcing the self/other dichotomization” enabled China to refer to military personnel
deployed in Xinjiang as harmony makers while vilifying advocates for Tibetan independence,
such as the Dalai Lama and Liu Xiaobo, as disharmonious.
232
This framework positioned Han
Chinese as the self and disharmonious ethnic minorities as the other, creating a logic that
allowed Han Chinese people to wear the clothing of Tibetans and Uyghurs because of an
assumed sameness within the nation, while on the other hand confirming that Tibetans and
232
“Thousands of Harmony Makers Sent to Urumqi Communities While Authorities Vow Harsh
Punishment against Syringe Attackers”
Xinhua
, September
6, 2009.
http://tr.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zt/xjzzq/200909/t20090907_1431801.htm
; Embassy of the PRC to the USA
“Chinese Embassy Spokesman Wang Baodong: Dont Politicize the Nobel Peace Prize,
USA Today
, December 10,
2010.
231
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
377.
230
Schell and Delury,
Wealt h and Power,
376.
229
Tim Summers, Ethnic conflict and protest in Tibet and Xinjiang: Unrest in Chinas west and Chinas
frontier regions: ethnicity, economic integration and foreign relations,”
International Affairs
93, no. 3 (May 2017):
754.
62
Uyghurs were bellicose and fundamentally different, thus requiring forced assimilation and
suppression under Hu’s Harmonious Society” doctrine.
Harmony, as defined by the state, involves alignment with Chinas rags to riches
Cinderella story. Popular investment in this vision encourages allegiance to the states agenda of
wealth creation. Recall Zhang Lijias interviewee who said, We were called the sick man of
Asia. Now we are strong and rich enough to hold such a major international event.
233
Hu’s
framework for a harmonious society” makes economic development a source of national pride,
positioning state-led economic progress as both a justification for and a means of securing public
allegiance. Those who challenge this narrative, particularly ethnic minorities, are labeled as
outsiders and disruptors.
Zhang Yimou witnessed Chinas awe-inspiring economic transformation firsthand. In
many ways, the trajectory of his life mirrored his country’s rapid growth. At the beginning of his
career, he sold a pint of his blood to afford his first camera, and his first films explored the harsh
realities of poverty. Now, a multimillionaire and Chinas most famous director, Zhang creates
films about martial glory and imperial grandeur. But nothing Zhang or any future Opening
Ceremony director would do could compare to 2008.
The 2008 ceremonies concluded abruptly for Zhang. The thousands of people who had
worked with him for months, if not years, boarded planes the very next day. What had begun
with such ostentation ended with little fanfare. All of a sudden, all the people were gone, and
the building was empty, Zhang recalled. A sense of being neglected arose. When I woke up the
following day, I found that the Olympic Games had gone away.
234
By morning, a project that
234
Long Wei and Bei Ke,
Zhang Yimou: From a Man of Northwest
China to the Chief Director of the 2008
Beijing Olympic Games
(China Pictorial Publishing
House, 2009), 251.
233
Zhang Lijia, “Hand Grenades and the Olympics,168.
63
had consumed seven years of Zhang’s life was over. The thousands of unnamed people who had
contributed to that brilliant bloom now no longer Zhang’s human machinery quietly
returned to their lives, unnoticed. It was as if it had all been nothing more than a dream.
64
CONCLUSION: What Does China’s Future Hold?
In 2008, modern Chinese methods were disguised as tradition. As robed drummers
quoted
The
Analects
, a casual observer might not realize
that the Confucianism the CCP
endorsed was, in some ways, newer than the LED technology the
fou
drum models were outfitted
with. The kind of mass spectacle Zhang employed to depict ancient Chinas splendor was a
product of the Industrial Age and refined during the Cultural Revolution. Yet it is often not
Chinas past but its future that the west is concerned with. China is the future is a dictum one
will hear repeated in conversations, op-eds, and economic forecasts. Recall Eberts cautionary
remark: Today, from a standing start, China has the world’s third-largest economy. We are first,
but sinking. They’re rising. The Opening Ceremony’s appeals to the past were ultimately grand
gestures toward its utopian vision of the future.
As Beijing prepared for the 2008 Games, discourse about Chinas future and the
means China would take to achieve it gave rise to the term Sinofuturism, often attributed to
musician and theorist Steve Goodman. He described Sinofuturism as a darkside cartography of
the turbulent rise of East Asia that grafts seemingly heterogeneous elements onto the
topology of planetary capitalism.
235
This framework
offers a valuable lens for understanding
Chinas self-presentation in the 2008 Opening Ceremony, as well as its broader vision for
modernity. Sinofuturism is more than just an aesthetic it is a mechanism through which the
CCP projects China as a formidable global power while simultaneously invoking a civilizational
tradition rooted in Confucianism. This tradition, as discussed in Chapter Two, has been reshaped
over the past century to align with state ideology. The 2008 Beijing Opening Ceremony was, in
235
Steve Goodman “Fei ch’ien Rinse Out: Sino-futurist Undercurrency,”
Pli: The Warwick Journal of
Philosophy
7 (1998): 155.
65
essence, a time capsule of Chinas projected future. Nearly two decades later, we can assess how
accurate those projections were, examining how Chinas present is shaped by the ideological
visions and economic policies of the 2000s.
Almost a decade after the 2008 Opening Ceremony, artist Lawrence Lek expanded on the
concept of Sinofuturism in a video essay he calls its retroactive manifesto.
236
Sinofuturism is
not an identity claimed by the Chinese state but a term used by critics, making Lek’s perspective
particularly notable his manifesto is one of the most optimistic interpretations of
Sinofuturism, or at least one that is not straightforwardly critical of the CCPs ambitions. In
Sinofuturism
, Lek adopts the perspective of the state
itself, assessing Chinese stereotypes based
on their alignment with state priorities. Lek states:
Whether Chinese Olympic athletes are branded as robots, or Chinese students or
tourists are likened to swarms, or Shenzhen factory workers are criticised for flooding
the marketplace, the subtext is the same. It is the dehumanisation of the individual into a
nameless, faceless mass.
237
Rather than rejecting such characterizations, Lek argues that Sinofuturism embraces them. To
answer critiques of Chinese Olympic athletes and Shenzhen factory workers, Lek’s Sinofuturism
leans into the cultural assumption that Confucian societies are driven by collectivism, spurred by
a desire for social harmony. As discussed in Chapter Two, the traditionalism of Confucian
values is complicated by Chinas history of negotiation with Confucianism. However, the
broader idea of collectivism can also be linked to communist ideology, creating a helpful
paradigm in which both ancient and modern China are united by the same unifying principle.
237
Lek,
Sinofuturism
.”
236
Lawrence Lek,
Sinofuturism
,”
Sinofuturism.com
,
2016, video, 1 hour.
https://sinofuturism.com/
66
This deliberate embrace of orientalist tropes reflects the cultural phenomenon of
techno-Orientalism, a concept first introduced by Kevin Morley and David Robins.
238
Techno-Orientalism, as the term implies, replaces traditional Orientalist stereotypes depicting
Asia as culturally backward and technologically deficient with tropes that cast Asia as a
mechanized hub of technological production, driven by hypercapitalist market forces and ulterior
motives.
239
It fuses colonial-era views of Asian bodies
as coolie hordes with modern model
minority” myths that frame Asian minds as unfeeling, hyper-rational calculators.
In many sci-fi
narratives, Asians or Asian-coded figures appear as robots, aliens, or clones, and often en
masse.
240
Whether depicted as a looming force of global
domination or as morally neutral
automatons, these figures embody western anxieties that see East Asias rise as both inevitable
and unsettling.
Yet, techno-Orientalism can serve the Chinese states rebranding efforts in how it fits
within the cultural frameworks (primarily western) foreign nations already use to understand
China. After all, it is easier to manipulate existing stereotypes than to dismantle them entirely. As
Lek states, Sinofuturism answers the Chinese problems of physical servitude, intellectual
conformity, and computational OCD, by openly embracing Artificial Intelligence. Instead of
challenging stereotypes that portray Chinese people as an unthinking collective, Lek’s
Sinofuturism simply dismisses the western idealization of individuality. Lek’s allegory defines
individuals not as discrete entities but as nodes of a unified whole; artificial intelligence is a
useful metaphor as it is better understood as a system or collective rather than a singular entity.
241
241
“Sinofuturism (18392046 AD) Artist Talk with Lawrence Lek,posted by “Visual Arts Centre of
Clarington,YouTube video, 1:18:18, June 9, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67rfO1VQjH0
240
Michelle N. Huang,
Inhuman Figures
, Smithonian Asian
Pacific American Center, video, 23:53.
https://apa.si.edu/inhuman-figures/
239
David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, and Greta A. Niu,
Techno-Orientalism:
Imagining Asia in Speculative
Fiction, History, and Media
(Rutgers University Press,
2015), 1-19.
238
David Morley and Kevin Robins,
Spaces of Identity:
Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural
Boundaries
(Routledge, 1995).
67
Lek’s allegory is especially fitting because AI, like the 2008 Opening Ceremony,
showcases the power of large-scale human labor and Chinas ability to mobilize it. Though
AI, much like the Mechanical Turk, is often perceived as autonomous, it ultimately relies on
hidden human effort.
242
But the ceremony’s movable type installation does not sustain the
illusion of machine independence for long it culminates in a reveal of its nearly 900 operators.
The performance also draws a direct lineage between Chinas contemporary technological
achievements and historical feats like the Great Wall, both framed as triumphs of collective
labor. Sinofuturism aestheticizes the entanglement of human effort and machine progress,
wrenching artifacts of the past to prefigure the future.
Figure 15: The Opening Ceremony’s depiction of the Great Wall during the movable
type act features a digital rendering of the wall at the edges of the large screen scroll framed
by the type blocks. Olympics.
Jennifer Rhee writes extensively about the potential of such anti-humanist frameworks to
capture the lived experiences of Asians laboring under the shadow of western hegemony. She
asks:
Who is the human who is de facto valorized and normativized through the
anthropomorphic visions that organize robotics? Who, in their purported
incommensurability, unknowability, unfamiliarity, or illegibility within robotics
242
I invoke the Mechanical Turk because it is frequently referenced in contemporary discussions about AI
to illustrate the gap between appearance and reality in machine intelligence.
68
narrow views of humanness, is excluded, erased, dehumanized, rendered
not-human?
243
For Rhee,
anthropomorphic frameworks only perpetuate the colonial logic that historically
subjugated non-white peoples. The first fish-gutting machine in America was nicknamed the
Iron Chink” a stark reminder that, as Lisa Lowe argues, the Asian body has long been
rendered illegible within western conceptions of humanity. Lowe points out that it was this
dehumanization of the other that precipitated the economic conditions that allowed western
nations to prosper and promote theories of liberal humanism.
244
In their essay on ethnofuturisms, Merve Verlag, Armen Avanessian, and Mahan Moalemi
assert that movements like Sinofuturism negotiate between valuing tradition that is, ethnic
loyalty and modernization. This balance enables such movements to function
not [as] an
ideology but a way to survive as well as a
modus
vivendi
.”
245
Similarly, Lek claims that the goal
of Sinofuturism is not originality or liberation but
survival
.
246
Chinas survival in the current age
depends on how successfully it can adopt western economic principles while preserving Chinese
character, whatever that may mean.
Lek’s interpretation of Sinofuturism helps explain the embrace of the trope of the
nameless, faceless Asian in the 2008 Opening Ceremony, illustrated by performers who
functioned as blocks of movable type, pixels on an LED clock, or threads of an invisible ink
brush. The
illegibility of the individual within the
ceremony is the
intentional rejection of
western values of individuality and independence. The racialized mechanization of the human
body has long been an essential part of the global economy, and the championing of this
246
Lek,
Sinofuturism
.”
245
Merve Verlag, Armen Avanessian, Mahan Moalemi,
Ethnofuturisms:
Findings in Common and
Conflicting Futures
,” (Zabriskie Buchladen für Kultur
und Natur, 2018), 16.
https://www.academia.edu/36782398/Avanessian_Moalemi_Ethnofuturisms_intro_pdf
244
Lisa Lowe,
Intimacies of the Four Continents
, (Duke
University Press, 2015), 2.
243
Jennifer Rhee,
The Robotic Imaginary the Human and the Price of Dehumanized Labor
(Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 4.
69
mechanization in the Opening Ceremony is Sinofuturisms conversion of the chains of colonial
embodiment into armor. If the wealth of western nations was built on the rapacious exploitation
of Chinese resources and the mechanization of Chinese coolie labor, then Chinas own
labor-intensive methods of strengthening its economy are excused according to the logic of Lek’s
Sinofuturism.
Ultimately, emphasizing the value of Chinese collectivism serves nationalist purposes.
One should be skeptical of claims that qualities like independence and collectivism are
natural to one people and not another. For the past two centuries, Chinese political leaders have
claimed that democracy is incompatible with the traditional Chinese mind though by now it
should be clear that the meaning of tradition” changes with each leader. Although
modernization enriches the state, it does not always translate into a better quality of life for its
workers. David Harvey notes that the Chinese state embraced neoliberal economic reforms to
amass wealth and upgrade its technological capacities so as to be better able to manage internal
dissent, to better defend itself against external aggression, and to project its power outwards onto
its immediate geopolitical sphere of interest.
247
Although
Chinas rapid economic growth has
achieved rapid growth and alleviated the poverty of many, Harvey writes, Chinas
neoliberalism has also reconstituted class power and widened socioeconomic disparities.
248
Among those most affected by Chinas infrastructure priorities along with Tibetans
and Uyghurs are the nation’s working class, who exist at the social and physical fringe of
urban centers, inhabiting the c
hengxiang jiehebu
(
乡结合部
),
or villages-in-the-city”
(VICs).
249
In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, environmental
improvement projects
249
Ge Zhang, “Sino-no-futurism,in “Sinofuturism(s),ed. Virginia L. Conn and Gabriele de Seta.
Verg e:
Studies in Global Asias
7, no. 2 (Fall 2021): 92
248
Harvey,
A Brief History of Neoliberalism,
155.
247
Harvey,
A Brief History of Neoliberalism,
122.
70
demolished roughly 171 VICs, displacing about 74,100 permanent residents and around 296,400
migrants.
250
Billboards of palm trees and beaches were
erected to hide gritty neighborhoods from
tourists.
251
Economists Hyun Bang Shin and Bingqin Li observe that between 2001 and 2008,
Beijing’s VICs bore a disproportionate share of the Games costs, as the state prioritized the
needs of visitors over those of local inhabitants a pattern common among developing
countries hosting mega-events.
252
Sinofuturism and the VIC sit together uneasily. To scholar Ge Zhang, the VIC is defined
by
unsanitary restaurants with trashy cor; dodgy
home clinicswet markets of fresh produce
and various exotic meatsand internet cafés filled with underage dropouts who are bored stiff.
Ge sees the VIC as a challenge to conventional Sinofuturist frameworks.
253
VICs, he says, are
places where time stands still, where residents exist the never-ending everyday.
254
Home to
garbage recycling stations and factories along with the people who work in them, these areas
contain the refuse of Chinas project of modernization. Ge
, in turn, criticizes the prevailing
Anglo interpretation of Sinofuturism as merely
a
techno-Orientalist reaction toward the
impotence and expiry of the declinist West [rather] than an incisive provocation of Chinese
futures concretely rooted in the Chinese condition.
255
He proposes that there are multiple
coexisting Sinofuturisms and that the Sinofuturism that VIC residents experience is no less
255
Ge, “Sino-no-futurism,93.
254
Ge, “Sino-no-futurism,94; Christophe Thouny, “Waiting for the Messiah: The Becoming Myth of
Evangelion and Densha otoko.
Mechademia
4, no. 1
(2009): 114.
253
Ge, “Sino-no-futurism,94.
252
Shin and Li, 561.; the immense cost of hosting the Olympics has also led many cities, particularly those
in western democracies, to lose interest in hosting the Games. Beijing hosted the Olympics for the second time in
the winter of 2022, and during the bidding process, five cities all within western democracies pulled out of the
bidding. See: Victor Matheson and Rob Baade, “
Rescuing
the Olympic Games from Their Own Success
,”
International Monetary Fund
, July 2021.
251
Stephen Wade, “Exiled artist Ai Weiwei reflects on Beijing Olympics,” AP News, February 3, 2022.
250
Hyun Bang Shin and Bingqin Li, “Whose Games? The Costs of Being Olympic Citizens in Beijing,
Environment and Urbanization 25, no. 2 (2013): 560
71
important than the version pushed by the state, which philosopher Yuk Hui contends is only an
acceleration of the European modern project.
256
But those living on Chinas urban fringe are not necessarily passive victims of modernity.
For instance, Dafen Art Village situated on the Shenzhen city limits differs from the
typical VIC portrayed by Ge, partly because it has gained recognition for its state-of-the-art hand
copies of famous western oil paintings.
257
When I visited
in the summer of 2024, I noticed a
newly opened museum displaying local art. Those I passed were smoking, sharing beers, and
playing cards with their friends; some were working at their easels and had earbuds in, painting
from images on their phones. My goal is not to romanticize but to destigmatize the lives of those
who live in precarity. Ge observes that the do-it-so-your-kids-won’t-have-to mentality of
postponing the future no longer persists among the younger generation. They put faith in a tiny
profit margin and low-affect pleasures they can enjoy now rather than in an uncertain
future…”
258
This mindset is not confined to Chinas
urban fringes it has also permeated
mainstream work culture. Increasingly, Chinese youth are rejecting the grueling demands of the
996” white-collar schedule, instead choosing to withdraw from the competitive labor market
and adopt a minimalist lifestyle sustained by low-pressure, part-time employment, which they
call
tangping
(
躺平
),
or lying flat.
259
Columnist Alex
Lo contends that its Chinas
259
China is infamous for its work culture of “996which is short for “9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.Labor
laws are very week and it is illegal to create or join labor unions aside from the national state-approved labor union;
Han-Yu Hsu, “How do Chinese people evaluate Tang-Ping (lying flat) and effort-making: The moderation effect of
return expectation,”
Front Psychology
, November 16,
2022.
258
Ge, “Sino-no-futurism,95.
257
The 2016 documentary
Chinas Van Goghs
by Yu Haibo
and Kiki Tianqi Yumay have contributed to
Dafens popularity and growth.
256
Ge, “Sino-no-futurism,97.; Yuk Hui,
The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in
Cosmotechnics,
(Urbanomic Media, 2016): 297.
72
bourgeoisie, not the proletariat, who will determine the future.
260
Perhaps the bourgeoisie are
determining the future, but their position may not be entirely enviable.
Aware of the paradox of critiquing capitalist nations while incorporating capitalist
elements into its own economy, the CCP maintains that socialism remains its ultimate goal.
261
Since launching its experiment in state-controlled capitalism, the government has framed
capitalism as a temporary measure to close the developmental gap imposed by historical foreign
exploitation.
262
Today, China is more feared than exploited. In many ways, events have unfolded
as western critics predicted after the 2008 Games. Since 2008, the government of China has
further strengthened its control, and the human rights situation has further deteriorated, Ai
Weiwei, the renowned Chinese artist-in-exile and CCP dissident who helped design Beijing’s
main Olympic stadium, told AP News in 2022.
263
Meanwhile, China has taken significant steps to address sources of discontent.
In 2018,
the International Monetary Fund reported that China had overseen a modest decline in
inequality since 2008,
264
and in 2021, the central
government unveiled a five-year plan aimed at
achieving common prosperity” by narrowing the wealth gap and improving the quality of life at
the rural fringe by urbanizing more evenly.
265
News
organizations clamored that China was
265
14th Five-Year Plan for High-Quality Development
of the Peoples Republic of China,
(Asian
Development Bank, 2021): 1.
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/705886/14th-five-year-plan-high-quality-development-prc.pdf
.
264
David Dollar,
Poverty, Inequality, And Social Disparities
During China's Economic Reform
,” World
Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4253, (July 2007), 2.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23550251_Poverty_Inequality_and_Social_Disparities_During_China's_E
conomic_Reform
263
Ai Weiwei helped design the Birds Nest stadium in which the Opening Ceremony took place when he
still held hope that China would open up to democracy; the curving beams of the stadium, he said, would symbolize
China’s openness. Wade, “Exiled artist Ai Weiwei.
262
Heazle and Knight,
ChinaJapan Relations in the
Twenty-first Century,
62.
261
Michael Heazle and Nick Knight,
ChinaJapan Relations in the Twenty-first Century: Creating a Future
Past?
(Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007): 62.
260
Alex Lo,
Why modern China is most misunderstood
,”
South China Morning Post,
April 23, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3007373/why-modern-china-most-misunderstood
73
centering communism once more.
266
In light of these changes, critiques of Chinas uneven
modernization must be continuously reassessed as centralized governments like the CCP can
change direction far quicker than democracies. Chinas strategy for shaping the future remains
fluid, making its next move as unpredictable as the future itself.
For many, studying modern Chinese history is interesting insofar as it may assist in
predicting Chinas future and, in turn, the future of the global order. Typically, these predictions
take the form of projections of GDP growth or political analyses. Mega-events like the Olympics
are either overlooked or used to reinforce existing western media narratives. During the 2008
Games, Ai Weiwei kept a diary in which he observed, In this world where everything has a
political dimension, we are now told we mustn’t politicize things: This is simply a sporting
event, detached from history and ideas and values detached from human nature, even.
267
Ais
observation highlights a broader issue with Chinas development: it often neglects the very
people it claims to serve. It is these people who are compelled to build the future the state works
toward, and it is these people whose homes were razed to build this future. Intellectualizing the
futurist ideology driving the 2008 Games risks masking the lived realities and agency of those
involved. Whether hidden behind painted billboards or hidden in blocks of type, we must not
forget those people.
The summer of 2024 was the first time in a decade that my mother and I visited China. It
was nearly unrecognizable. Bullet trains link every major city, nearly every service relies on
smartphones, and restaurant menus come only as QR codes. In our budget hotel, we shared an
elevator with a robot that was delivering room service. Why did I even immigrate? my mother
joked. We were staying just minutes from where my mother grew up in Shanghai. In 2014, her
267
Wade, Exiled artist Ai Weiwei.
266
Stephen McDonell, “Changing China: Xi Jinping’s effort to return to socialism,” BBC, September 22,
2021.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58579831
74
childhood
shikumen
(
⽯库⻔
)
was slated for demolition.
268
Upon our return in 2024, we found
that it had been replaced with a shopping mall built as a
shikumen
pastiche. My mother wandered
around, searching for someone to practice her Shanghainese with, but no one we met was from
the city.
Figure 16: My mothers old
shikumen
, now a shopping
mall. Photo is my own.
On a mission to get the cheapest haircuts possible, we stumbled into a mall reminiscent of
the ones I would frequent on childhood visits to China. Most of the storefronts were closed, only
half of the lights were on, and the escalators were defunct. On the bottom floor were a few shops
selling wholesale pajamas and bras. It was nothing like the upscale malls we had visited that
summer, ones with gourmet restaurants, chandeliers, and air-conditioned tunnel access to the
metro a privilege one cannot take for granted in the intense July heat. And though this mall
was a bit worn, it offered a welcome escape from the loud, bustling tourist areas we had been
visiting. Most importantly, the AC still worked. A few children gathered by an open buffet, doing
268
A
shikumen
is a traditional Shanghai-style house that blends western architectural elements with
Chinese courtyard designs.
75
homework next to their parents. Older women chatted as they ate their daily stock of tomato,
egg, and rice.
Buildings are physical reminders of the past. If you visit any major Chinese city today,
you will encounter many reminders of Chinas bygone visions of the future. The Olympic
stadiums constructed for the 2008 Games still stand, though they are largely unused. This mall,
an awkward blemish on Chinas shiny, futuristic veneer, will likely not be as fortunate as those
stadiums. Like my mothers
shikumen
, it will be demolished
in due time. But no one there
seemed to mind. For now, at least, it can provide some shade.
Figure 17: An old shopping mall that will likely be demolished soon. Photo is my own.
76
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